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A RAMBLE 



IN 



NEV\^ GRANADA. 

The Magdalena River. — The Mountains. — Table Lands.— ! 

Llanos.— Carnivero us Animals and Reptiles and other | 

Enemies of Human Life. — Modes of Travel. I 

. - i 

BOGOTA AS A WINTER SANITARIUM. | 

Observations upon the General Attitude of the Spanish ; 
Races towards the Modern Tendencies to Civflization, '' 

j 

PlY f 

ERASTUS WILSON, M. D. 



NEW YORK: 

G. W. CARLETON & CO , PUBLISHERS. 

LONDON: S. LOW & CO. 

MDCCCLXXVm. 



A RAMBLE 



IN 




NE^A/ GRANADA. 



The Magdalena River. — The Mountains. — Tabl?; Lands. — 

Llanos. — Carniverous Animals and Reptiles and other 

Enemies of Human Life. — Modes of Travel. 

BOGOTA AS A WLVTER SANITARIUM. 

Observations upon the General Attitude of the Spanish 
• Races towards the Modern Tendencies to Civilization, 



MEDICUS. 



NEW YORK, 1878. 



NEW YORK TO HAYTI 

AND THE 

SPANISH MAIN. 



We sailed from New York the 27th pf October, 
1877, shivering under our light overcoats, that cold, 
disagreeable morning, on the steamer Etna^ a very 
seaworthy freight steamer, but with poor passen- 
ger accommodations. 

Slowly we steamed down the bay, as if our 
craft shared with us our reluctant parting, though 
Boreas was thus early hovering over our northern 
home with his icy breath, and Jupiter Pluvius 
seemed in league with him to make us less regret- 
ful of our winter' s absence. 

It was past meridian before we were fairly out- 
side the Hook and had turned our prow towards 
the sunny south. Twelve years residence in the 
metropolis of the Greater Antilles had already 
made us familiar with the attractions and some of 
the repulsions of the inter- tropics for a winter res- 
idence, and more willing to shrink from the winter 
of the north temperate zone, though its advanta- 
ges in many ways are clearly obvious to all, except 
intellectual blindness. 

After passing Hateras, our overcoats became su- 
perfluous, and in twenty-four hours more, insu- 



portable ; tlie weather was admirable, and no inci- 
dent worth relating occurred in our transit till we- 
reached Gfonaives, in the Republic of Hayti, on 
Friday evening, the 2nd of ISTovember. At this 
port we remained, discharging and taking in cargo,, 
until Monday noon following, broiling under a. 
most relentless inter-tropical sun, whose heat was- 
almost insufferable. 

Sunday was the anniversary of the patron saint 
of Gonaives, and a Haytian war steamer arrived 
on Saturday afternoon with President Canals on 
board to give the eclat of his presence to the feast. 
Tlie ship bringing the President and suite, in- 
cluding the high officials of the Avmy and Navy,. 
came to anchor near our ship, and after the cere- 
monies of debarkation, the chief engineer, Mr. 
Buslmell from Connecticut, U. S. A., came ort 
board of our vessel and invited our captain and 
ourselves to go on shore, where we were introduced 
to the Presidential party and invited to the Ball ta 
be given in its honor that evening. * 

The night, however, came on dark and gusty, 
and landing consequently dangerous, so we deemed 
it more prudent not to avail ourselves of the po- 
lite attention, though an official boat came off for 
us about 11 o'clock, p. m. 

During our stay on shore we witnessed the mili- 
tary parade, composed of a battalion of infantry 
whose dress was rather multiform than uniform, 
as also the armament ; and the marching was by' 
no means equal to the best European standards. 



Indeed the wliole affair seemed a laughable bur- 
lesqae. Here are, surely, worn by the officers, 
military suits more ancient than the wearers, some 
•of them, no doubt, antedating Toussaint T Over- 
ture, being vestiges of the French domination. It 
is a curious spectacle, to be long remembered. 
The ebony privates straggling along in the most 
unsoldierly indolence, in step as discordant as the 
notes of the nondescript musical instruments which 
cannot be said to mark the time, the officers now 
-and anon berating this want of harmon}^, to be 
scolded in turn, in presence of his men, by a high- 
er officer, for excess of zeal ; both clearly actuated 
by personal vanity seeking opportunity for exhibi- 
tion of authority to admiring friends. To heighten 
the ludicrous effect, we were told by a foreign res- 
ident that during the Franco-German war an edi- 
torial article upon it in the leading newspaper of 
the capital, closed with the following apostrophy : 
*' Courage, brave France, Hayti is looking on.'' 

A shark's leap after indigestible food. 

As the German steamer lying near us drew up 
its anchor somewhat quickly with its steam wind- 
lass, and when it was about fifteen feet above the 
water a monstrous shark that had no doubt dis- 
covered from a distance the moving object in the 
water and pursued it, leapt after it perpendicular- 
ly more than its full length, some twelve to four- 
teen feet, into the air. 



On Monday, Nov. 5th, we sailed from Gonaives 
and arrived at Port au Prince the same evening. 
We remained at Port au Prince nntil Friday, 
Nov. 9th, as all cargo has to be got out of and into 
the ship by means of lighters or launches ; a long 
and tedious mode of handling cargo. 

POET AU PEINCE, 

The capital, is situated at the head of Gonaives 
Bay, on the west coast of Hayti, about sixty mile& 
due south from the town of Gonaives. It is locat- 
ed at the foot of the mountains that rise in close- 
proximity to the bay, and contains about 20,000 
inhabitants. Among these is a sprinkling of whites,, 
the foreign element, engaged in trade ; but these- 
are under legal disabilities intended to prevent 
their becoming a permanent element of the popu- 
lation. The town is composed mostly of wooden, 
tumble-down looking houses, the streets unpaved,. 
with surface sewage, and is in consequence, to- 
gether with its climate, very unhealthy. Even the 
waters of the anchorage are offensive to the olfac- 
tories of strangers unaccustomed to their peculiar 
odors. This anchorage is so shut in by the moun- 
tains on the east and south that the breezes do not 
reach it, and the torrid sun is here so ardent that 
during the day we are sweltering under the can- 
vas awning on deck, and at night are dreaming of 
''shapes hot from Tartarus," which cannot be far 
away. 



The day after our arrival an old sea captain 
(Ellis) familiar with these regions, now an agent 
of the Underwriters, and a passenger on our ship, 
borrowed the captain' s gig and invited ns and a 
fellow passenger to a sail about the bay in the 
hope of finding some sport at duck shooting, and 
perhaps some cool breezes farther out at the lob- 
ster islands. Delighted with the thought of such 
a possibility and armed with our sun umbrellas 
and two Kemington sporting rifles, we set out on 
our cruise. Passing outside the anchorage north 
coastwise we are soon in clear water and gazing 
in admiration at the huge masses and varied forms 
of the coral reefs that spread themselves in threat- 
ening proximity beneath our keel, sometimes rising 
to give us a bump that seems to say : "Don't you 
see by the surface indications that you can't come 
here ? If you are not careful we will stick one of 
our sharp points through your bottom ! " Having 
an old salt at our helm we got no dangerous blows 
however, and although the coral bottom is always 
in sight and appeared to be near the surface we 
find by occasional measurement, with the oar, that 
it is generally a considerable distance beneath us. 

Although we find the sea breezes very scarce, we, 
after a couple of hours sail, discover indications of 
ducks and get our rifles ready. Yes ! there goes 
one up ! steady the helm, there are more of them 
far in towards shore. Now keep to windward an d 
run down on them quickly, we will get within 
rifle range as they will cross our bows in their rise. 



AH is now bustle and anticipation among us three 
on our little craft. Yes, there are seven or eight 
of them, and from our present position they are 
ranged so as to present a group to us. ' ' Steady 
now," says the captain, ''be ready, we are near- 
ing them rapidly and they will soon get up. JN'ow 
we are in range, take the large rifle and give them 
a shot before they rise," says the captain. Sure 
enough, they are now huddled together prepara- 
tory to their rise. ' ' Take care, not a moment to 
lose ; you will have a surer aim w^hile they are 
sitting on the water." Glowing with the enjoy- 
ment of the critical moment of a sportsman's op- 
portunity, we raised the long range rifle to our 
face, balancing ourselves carefully so as not to be 
affected by the movements of the boat. With 
careful precision we draw a fine bead upon our in- 
tended victims and fire. Our aim was only too 
sure and sent the necks of two decoy ducks flying 
through the air, and a wild hubbub on shore now 
discovers to us that our excitement had blinded 
us to the presence of a bush- shanty on shore, in 
blunderbus range of the group we had fired upon. 
We atone for our humiliating blunder by purchas- 
ing three ducks at half a dollar each, and go on 
our way wdser in the arts of Haytian sports, while 
the innocent pelicans had to suffer the consequen- 
ces of our chagrin as we sped homeward towards 
the ship. 

While waiting here we were graciously received, 
and hospitably entertained by our Minister, Mr. 



Basset, at his house on tlie mountain side, some 
three hundred feet above the town. Mr. Basset 
has resided here nine years. He is a mulatto, 45 
years of age, of good natural abilities, gentle- 
manly education and instincts, and, we think, 
makes an excellent and effective diplomatic repre- 
sentative. . His residence is delightfull}^ situated 
with a clear view over the town and bay, surround- 
ed by shady walks, the atmosphere redolent of 
aromatic coffee plants, orange blossoms and ole- 
anders, and in the absence of breezes the soft even- 
ing zephyrs play all their witching coquetries with 
the curly locks of his bevy of chubb}^ children as 
they sport upon the wide porch in front. Mrs. 
Basset, a handsome and cultivated octoroon, does 
the honors of his house vfith charming frankness 
and dignitjT-. 

Coffee grows wild here in abundance and is the 
€hief article of export. The oranges are not near- 
ly so sweet and luscious as in Cuba and in our 
Southern states. 

Oar six days in Hayti tend to confirm what we 
had before strongly suspected, viz : That civilza- 
tion in these regions must necessarily be of foreign 
growth and importation ; a reflected light. The 
physical conditions here must ever prevent its 
becoming indigenous to the soil. We discover 
evidences that a higher degree of civilization has 
existed here and has ebbed away, is still receding, 
perhaps never to return. Decay is doing its work. 

On the evening of the 8th, we departed south- 



10 mum 

.fi 

wards, arriving at Savanilla, New Granada, mon& 
of the Magdalena River, on the 12th. On disem- 
barking here we took the rail to Barranquilla,. 
fifteen miles up the river, where the Custom House- 
is situated, and which is the real centre of com- 
merce and foot of navigation of the river ; the- 
actual port, up to which all ships will go as soon 
as the bar is well surveyed and possible obstruc- 
tions are removed. 

Barranquilla is said to contain 18,000 inhabi- 
tants, it is situated on the 11th parallel of latitude,- 
]S"., on low, flat, sandy soil, which absorbs the 
rains as soon as fallen, has unpaved streets, and 
is composed, in most part of mud houses. These 
houses are constructed by first setting up four 
posts, connected at top by poles, on which a 
thatched roof is woven. The space between the 
posts is then interwoven with split bamboo or 
cafiabrava, and plastered over on both sides with 
mud. The bare earth generally serves as a floor^ 
but in the better class of mud houses it is covered 
with a layer of bricks or stones. An unpainted 
wooden bench to serve the general purposes of a 
table, and some stools or chairs with a seat and 
back of rawhide, complete the furniture, A piece 
of straw or basket-work matting, spread upon the 
floor by night, forms the bed of the general run>f 
mud houses, such as we are frequently compelled 
to lodge in while traveling in South America, as- 
may be seen further on in our narrative, though 
the better class of these, here in Barranquilla, are 



11 

furnislied with the luxury of cot- bedsteads and 
mosquito netting. There are, however, some large 
and comfortable private residences here, though 
not numerous. 

The white sand in the streets gives a very clean- 
ly and healthy appearance to the town, but it re- 
flects the torrid sunbeams, making it very hot, 
except in the afternoon, in which part of the day 
we have had cool breezes most of the time we 
spent here ; intermittents, however, are endemic. 

As in all Spanish towns, the churches are im- 
mense structures, forming central figures in strik- 
ing contrast with the general impoverished appear- 
ance of the houses. The inhabitants are a motley 
of colors ; white, red, and black, loell mixed ; the 
red or copper color being perhaps the prevailing 
element, outside the foreign population. We have 
had to wait seven days at this port for the first 
steamer up the river, and the town is becoming 
monotonous, so that we are glad to be again afloat, 
even upon 

THE MUDDY MAGDALET^A RIVER. 

Slowly our steamer crawls out of the narrow 
and crooked arm of the river, or canal, on which 
the tov 1) is built, just as Vienna is built upon an 
arm of the Danube, (if a comparison may be allow- 
ed between such widely different places), and 
dropped down about two miles, into the turbid 
and rapid main river, now swollen by rains in the 



12 

distant Cordilleras, and turned the nose of our 
stern-wheel, Mississippi looking boat, up stream. 

Fairly launched, we now^ turn to the contempla- 
tion of our surroundings. We have paid $60, and 
$10 extra for a stateroom, to convey us to Honda, 
the head of navigation, a trip of from 8 to 15 days 
when the water is high, as it now happens to be. 

We find ourselves on an English built steamer, 
brought here in sections, with open lower deck, 
about eighteen inches above the w^ater, on which 
are its two tubular boilers in the centre, and its 
two steam cylinders astern ; the balance of space 
being occupied by huge i3iles of wood for fuel, and 
by freight that cannot be stowed below decks. 

Above, an upper deck is occupied by a long 
saloon containing dining table for passengers, and 
ranged on each side, is a row of rough pine boxes 
with passage ways between and outside of them, 
utterly without furniture, except a rusty tin wash- 
basin and pitcher, and a piece of coarse canvas, 
stretched upon a wooden frame across one-half 
the space inside, to serve as a bed. One of these 
boxes is the " Stateroom^' for which we have paid 
ten dollars extra passage money. Across the stern 
end of the saloon is a partition, hiding closets, with 
a wash-room on either side ; each wash-room con- 
taining a public towel for twenty passengers. 
The captain, Bradford by name, an American 
from Alabama, was formerly a captain in the U. 
S. Navy, who went into the rebellion with his 
state, and at its close found himself wounded and 



13 

partially disabled, with Ills occupation gone. He 
is now in voluntar}'^ exile, content to win liis daily 
bread for self and family in this wilderness of 
swamp and miasm. 

He is a genial and polite gentleman, solicitous 
of the comfort of his passengers. The character 
of the captain, however, forms a striking contrast 
with the comfortless condition of his boat, the 
Confianza so called, and which, by the way it 
steamed up the now swollen and strong current, 
taken together with the evident indifference of its 
English proprietors to the comfort of passengers, 
told very clearly that strength, and endurance in 
carrying freight was the prevailing thought that 
presided at its construction. 

Preadvised of the necessity therefor, we have 
provided ourselves with a piece of straw matting 
to serve us as a bed, together with sheets, blanket, 
pillow, mosquito netting, towels, etc.; and al- 
though we found it impossible to sleep in the little 
wooden box called stateroom, we were furnished a 
cot bedstead in the saloon, on whicli we arranged 
our bed for the hours of sleep. 

But we are anticip:iting. It is now but 4 o' clock, 
p. M. ; we are but just launched upon the broad 
river with our prow directed up stream. On our 
right hand side we have a low swampy island, on 
which sundry cows, up to their bellies in mud 
and water, are leisurely browsing ; beyond them 
the low-lying town of Barranquilla, which we 
have just left ; in its background, a low, flat coun- 



14 

try is skirted by mountains in tlie far distance ; 
on our left and in front of us, is a wilderness of 
low swamp, extending farther than tlie eye can 
reach, and through which the muddy Magdalena 
comes pushing its tortuous way towards its moth- 
er waters. Abundance of floating plants that 
grow in lagoons or still -w^aters, strew the surface 
like the wreck of some fluvial garden that the high 
wandering waters have gleaned in swampy wastes, 
and are bearing back with them, to tell their won- 
derous tales to the deep blue sea. 

The torrid sun, during the day, compels us to 
keep under the awning, and as night approaches, 
the dark, humid atmosphere warns us not to wan- 
der from the same protecting shelter, except at 
our peril, for we feel the breath of chills and fever, 
and see it staring at us from the banks. 

It is nightfall ; we have already tied our boat to 
the bank and taken in more wood for fuel, and as 
there is a passibly clear moonlight we are again 
under way to continue our course during the night, 
''for one night only," because numerous snags 
and shoals make daylight indispensable to the 
safe navigation of this river. 

The Confianza being the champion time keeper, 
is expected, without accident, to make the trip to 
Honda in eight days, the usual time of other boats 
is said to be eleven, and from that to three months, 
according to the state of the river. 

On our remonstrance against the entire absence 
of provision for the comfortable lodgment of pas- 



15 

sengers, we are told tliat tlie line formerly pro- 
vided bedclothing, etc. ; but that it has been so 
mncli the habit of people after sleeping in them to 
carry them away, the company has ceased to re- 
place them, thereby leaving all passengers the 
necessity of providing their own bedding, or of 
roughing it the best way they may be able to do. 

We are informed by the officers of the boat, that ' 
the line is making from three to four thousand 
dollars profit upon each round trip, carrying each 
way from one thousand to fifteen hundred Cargas 
of freight, at 4 and 5 dollars per Carga, besides the 
passengers at sixty dollars each, and ten dollars 
extra for the closet (Stateroom) that only served to 
lock up chattels in, which however, judging from 
the company' s experience with their bed-clothing, 
would seem to be a necessary appendage. The 
night was sultry, and a bad cold rewarded our 
efforts to place our cot where we might get the 
relief of a moderate circulation of air. 

The following day is interspersed with various 
grades of shower and sunshine, and on every side 
of us is a monotonous wilderness of swamp, 
forest trees and impenetrable jungle, -and this 
monotony is only relieved by the lazy flight of 
wading birds as we pass, or the plunge of the 
alligators as the sharp crack of the Remington on 
board, awakes them from their slumbers to a reali- 
zation of our, to them, dangerous proximity, also 
an occasional woodpile upon the bank, for the use 
of passing steamers, and sometimes a hamlet of 



10 

mud or palm-leaf huts, whose occupants mostly 
fish their sustenance out of the muddy waters. 

Our steamer is obliged to tie up at one of these 
woodpiles twice during the day, and usually at 
nightfall, taking in the wood by candle-light, as 
much as she can cany, ready for an early start in 
the morning, as is the custom on our Mississippi, 
. twenty to thirty cords being taken at a time. It 
is a curious and interesting spectacle to watch 
this operation by about twenty peons, whom the 
boat caries for this purpose, and for getting out 
and in the cargo. 

First, rough tallow candles are lighted and stuck 
all over the woodpile, so that every moving thing 
may be seen ; because these piles are apt to be in- 
fested by venemous insects and reptiles. 

The wood is lifted stick by stick by one peon, 
and loaded upon the shoulder of another, who has 
his arm and neck protected by a coarse, thick 
bagging, and about his wrist is secured the ends of 
a yard of rope, which he, when loaded, throws 
over the load and catches in his other hand to bind 
the load in its place while he carries it on board. 
From time to time a peon, when loaded, will sud- 
denly dash his burden to the ground as he hears 
or feels something moving within it, or thinks he 
does. 

Then all is bustle and excitement, a lively hand- 
ling of clubs announces an attack upon and per- 
haps the death of some luckless intruder. 

We are interested also in observing, when we 



17 

stop at a riverside liamlet, that the employees 
on the boat are also merchants on their own ac- 
count, and in watching them, as also some of the 
passengers, as they peddle their small wares, 
such as combs, rosemaries and high colored cot- 
ton handkerchiefs among the dwellers in these 
slimy solitudes. Among them the Scotch-Amer- 
ican engineer occasionally appears with Cincin- 
nati hams, apples and lialf barrels of flour, luxu- 
ries rarely consumed here. 

During our third day on the river, we reach 
Mompos, a considerable town of old Spanish or- 
igin, now containing two or three thousand in- 
habitants, an imposing church and numerous 
houses with tiled roofs. In its vicinity along the 
river banks, are several pieces of cleared land with 
cattle in considerable quantities grazing upon them . 
We stopped to wood up and a motley crowd of 
all ages, sexes and shades of color, gathered on 
the bank, many offering eggs, fowls, fruits and 
some specimens of coarse pottery for sale. At 
this point we received several accessions to our 
passenger list, among others a medical student 
returning to Bogota to continue his studies a 
fourth year. This young man is intelligent, and 
interested us by his frankness in conversation, 
the first native who has frankly acknowledged 
the mixture of races here. In response to my in- 
quiry as to what proportion of the population of 
his town is of pure white blood, he promptly 
answered, 'Wery small, indeed," citing himself as 



18 

an example of a mixture of white, red and black. 
His personal appearance left no room for doubt as 
to the rectitude of his assurance. His frankness 
pleased us and established at once a friendly 
intercourse between us as fellow-travelers. Anoth- 
er, in half-indian costume with knife and re- 
volver in his belt, hauled his canoe alongside 
and came on board. He owns a large cattle farm 
one day's journey farther up the river, and is on 
an excursion buying up calves to increase his 
stock. He speaks a few words of broken English 
and informs us that he was five years at school 
in Jamaica, Long Island, some twenty years 
ago. He entertained us with many stories of 
wild life interspersed with those of tiger-hunt- 
ing along this river, principally higher up, where 
the mountains and cattle farms are in nearer prox- 
imity and more frequent. 

The next or fourth day we passed another town 
called Bancos, of about the same description as 
Mompos, rather romantically situated at the con- 
fluence of several rivers and strands of rivers. 
Two leagues above this point we pass the cattle 
farm of our fellow traveler, on the left bank of the 
river, and he points out to us in passing, his 
two dogs which gaze at us as we pass at some 
distance from the shore, and which, he assures us, 
are masters in the art of trailing the tiger and 
bringing him to bay while himself and comrades 
surround him with strong spears, upon which he 
rushes to his destruction. 



19 

These spears have cross pieces at the distance of 
eighteen inches from their points, in order to keep 
the fierce brute at a safe distance after he is pen- 
etrated by the spear. The hunters here fear to at- 
tack the tiger with the rifle, because if not hit in a 
vital part by the first shot they will inevitably de- 
stroy the hunter, because his terrible charge must 
unnerve the stoutest heart and steadiest aim, so 
that it would be only a very lucky bullet that 
would arrest his fearful onslaught. 

The tigers have killed thirty 4hree cattle on the 
farm of our fellow-passenger during the last two 
years, and he and his assistants have killed twen- 
ty-one tigers in retaliation. 

Their favorite mode of attack upon grown cattle 
is to stealthily approach and spring upon them 
while sleeping, and bite them through the nape of 
the neck, just as their smaller feline relatives do 
their prey ; but they often dispatch horses and 
mules by a single blow of their powerful claws 
upon the head, after which they eat away 
the breast and neck, frequently returning for a 
second meal the following night. It seldom at- 
tacks man, and only when with great hunger or 
when the victim is found sleeping, then he cleaves 
open his skull with a terrible stroke of his power- 
ful paw. When attacked, however, he does not 
fail to return the aggression with fearful earnest- 
ness. 

Our Captain relates one of the former cases that 
happened to his knowledge during the last year, 



20 

viz : It is tlie custom of wood- choppers along the 
river when their huts are in isolated spots, to con- 
struct a high scaffold or garret, to which they 
ascend to sleep bj a ladder which they draw up 
after them ; but one who had not yet finished his 
hut, located at the confluence of a considerable 
€reek with the Magdalena, had neglected the 
usual precaution of building a fire and keeping it 
burning during the night in-order to frighten away 
the tigers that might be prowling about his camp. 
As it was a bright moonlight night he chose in- 
stead, to sit by his door with his rifle, on guard, 
while his wife slept. Towards morning the wife 
awoke and insisted on relieving her husband of 
the watch, in order that he might get some sleep 
and be fresher for the next day's labor. He con- 
sented, and when he awoke in the morning the 
wife was missing. Eagerly he sought and called 
aloud for his missing companion, but all in vain. 
till on nearing the creek he discovered in the sand 
a trail as if something like a body had been drag- 
ged along, and tiger tracks by its side, lent a 
painful probability to his horrible suspicions. 

Following the trail it soon led into the water, 
procuring his canoe and rifle he struck the trail 
on the opposite side of the creek, and not far 
away, came upon the mangled, half devoured re- 
mains of his missing wife, with skull crushed in, 
showing that death had probably surpris'ed her so 
instantaneously that she had no time for outcry. 

Knowing the habits of the fierce brute after 



21 

gorging himself, tlie liusband peered about in the 
direction of the tracks, and soon discovered him 
asleep under the edge of the jungle. Creeping to a 
sure distance and taking careful aim he sent a 
leaden messenger of death crashing through its 
brain. With his own hands the woodman perform- 
ed the mournful task of gathering the mutilated 
remains of his loved companion into his canoe, to 
which he also dragged the body of her slayer, and 
commenced his solemn retreat to the nearest ham- 
let. 

A passenger told of another case he knew, of 
recent occurrence, in which a man and his son, 
camping for the night, had built the usual fire 
which the tigers seldom approach, wrapped them- 
selves in their blankets and laid themselves down 
to sleep with their dog between them as guardian. 
Towards morning their fire had gone out and sud- 
denly, strange, rushing, bustling and yelping 
noises and cries startled them from their slumbers. 
Springing to their feet and staring wildly about 
them nothing was to be seen, except that the dog 
was missing and, without doubt, had paid the 
penalty allotted to sleeping sentinels. 

At low stages of the water in this river, the tiger 
tracks are very numerous upon the sand and we 
are told these animals are not unfrequently seen 
swimming across the river. The alligators which 
infest these turbid waters and which do not fail to 
snatch the luckless homo that falls into them, res- 
pect the presence of this august quadruped, per- 



22 

haps on account of the terrible weapons with 
which his powerful claws are armed. 

Our Captain recently saw one of these respect- 
able carnivora swimming the river but a short dis- 
tance ahead of his boat, and gave him chase with 
the intention of running him down. The brute 
reached shoal water, however, when the boat was 
very near to him, and looked back over his shoul- 
der at his pursuers with an air of dignified indif- 
ference. 

A somewhat smaller animal that passes here as 
a lion, on account of its similar color and habits, 
also inhabits and roams through these forests and 
jungles. Though not as numerous as the tiger, 
they are said to be equally dangerous to men and 
cattle. We have inspected skins of these, at least 
five feet long without measuring the tail, and have 
also seen skins of tigers at least seven feet long, 
without measuring tail, which fact will furnish 
some idea of the power of these brutes. 

For- the sake of scientific truth we may as well 
say here that these two South American carni- 
vora are both leopards and not lions or tigers at 
all. The smaller of the two, here called lion, is, 
notwithstanding the fact that he is unspotted, 
the "Leopardus Concolor" or Puma, and the 
larger, here called tiger, is the " Leopardus Onca" 
the largest and fiercest of the leopard species. 

We passed Puerto ISTacional, the point of de- 
parture from the river, for Ocaiia, a town of six 
thousand inhabitants, seven leagues from the Mag- 



23 

dalena, and on the night of the 24th of November, 
we tied np. on the right bank at a storehouse 
where goods are disembarked for a considerable 
town called Yelez, six leagues back from the river. 
We found in charge of this storehouse a wanderer 
from the Nutmeg State. In a large bin in an out- 
house our attention was attracted to what at first 
sight appeared a round variety of Irish potatoe 
with the singular circumstance of being all nearly 
of same dimensions, about two inches in diameter. 
On closer inspection we find them to be the fa- 
mous Tagua nut or vegetable ivory ^ which are here 
collected in considerable quantities and shipped 
to Nuremburg, Bavaria, where they are elabor- 
ated into a great variety of toys and other objects 
of art, which are thence distributed to all parts of 
the world that consume such articles. These nuts 
are the kernel of the fruit of the Tagua Palm, 
which ripen, fall to the ground and decay, or are 
eaten by the land-crabs, leaving these kernels 
thickly strewn over the ground. 

South-east from this point Ihe region in close 
proximity and extending back towards the bound- 
eries of Venezuela, is occupied by the Carrari In- 
dians, a tribe so refractory to the approaches of 
the Spaniards, that they are still in a perfectly 
wild state, unsophisticated by the arts of the pale 
faces. They fly in terror from all organized at- 
tempts to approach them, and hunt down and 
slay without remorse the straggling white ad- 
venturer, just as we would do to a dangerous wild 
beast of prey. 



24 

They have a curious custom, probably connected 
with their religious superstitions, of stretching the 
bodies of such victims out upon the ground, and 
pinning tliem down with thirty-four arrows, and 
there leave them to be devoured by the vultures, 
which are so numerous that all except the bones 
disappear in a very few hours. These Indians use 
bows of great strength, bending it with the foot 
and drawing the arrow string 'with both hands 
they shoot the missile great distances with re- 
markable precision. 

On the 25th, although the mountains seldom 
appear to us at our standpoint upon the steamer, 
the country is, nevertheless, on both sides of us, 
evidently becoming somewhat higher and more 
varied in topography, the banks of the river oc- 
casionally rise into peiias or cliffs, and the monkeys 
more frequently chatter their, apparently to them, 
intelligible jargon, as i\ej swing themselves from 
tree to tree as we pass. 

When we stop23ed to wood up, a young civil 
engineer from Cincinnati, who came as fellow-pas- 
senger from N'ew York, under contract to assist in 
the construction of a narrow gauge railroad from 
Puerto Berrio on the river, to Medellin the capi- 
tal of the State of Antiochia, situated one hun- 
dred miles distant from the Magdalena, and who 
Avas armed with a new Colt's, insisted upon trying 
his shooting possibilities upon these unoffending 
progenitors of his race. We blush to confess it ; we 
were weak enough to be induced, much against 



our will, into complicity in the murder, by accom- 
panying this young sportsman a few steps into the 
jungle. The trees were tall, but after two or three 
shots, the young Buckeye succeeded in sending a 
bullet plump through the body of an old female 
of the large brown variety, which, after a cry of 
pain, and hanging by the tail for several minutes, 
fell hear"' long into the chapparal below, while two 
or three half-grown children of the victim exhibit- 
ed their agitation by cries and descent from limb 
to limb half way down to where the mother fell. 

Elated by his success, our nimrod proclaimed a 
reward of ten cents to whomsoever would bring his 
game to him from the almost impenetrable jungle, 
which proclamation being duly interpreted by us 
to the woodchopper' s boy, whom curiosity had 
attracted to the place of the firing, he instantly 
penetrated to the spot, and a continued series of 
commingled cries of the bo^^ and the monkey 
marked his line of retrocession till he appeared, 
dragging the wounded quadrumana by its tail, its 
companions all the while chattering in great agi- 
tation in the branches overhead. The fatal bullet 
had passed through her abdomen, and, unable to 
stand or walk, she rolled her eyes as if imploring 
mercy. Seeing her wounded unto death, we di- 
rected a bullet through her brain to put an end to 
her sufferings. On the same day we reached 
Puerto Berrio, so called, consisting of some bluffs 
on which several shanties of the Antiochia rail- 
road are located. We could not help noticing 



20 

tne expression of bewildered disappointment that 
played over the face of our young Cincinnatian as 
he contemplated for the first time, his new home. 
This is his first experience abroad, and surely 
he has commenced it at the bitter end. We left 
him, and arrived the same evening at Nare, a 
collection of mud huts at the confluence of the 
Nare and Magdalena rivers, and the initial point 
of the mule path which constitutes the present 
highway to Medellin. 

We tie up at l^are for the night, the native 
passengers go on shore to wander through the 
village, and we, for a time, entertain ourselves 
with watching curiously from the upper deck, the 
people going to and fro, each, with tallow candle 
in hand, intently looking along the ground before 
them. We feel a strong curiosity to know what 
is lost, and apply to our Captain for the de- 
sired information. He explains that nothing had 
been lost, but that the intent seeking is to avoid 
jinding, when too late, that they have stepped 
upon the venemous Mapana serpent which is here 
numerous and its bite generally fatal to the genus 
homo, although the hogs hunt and devour them 
with peculiar pleasure, apparently suffering no 
inconvenience from its fangs. The larger ones 
which grow from ten to fifteen feet, are not, how- 
ever, recommended as healthy to small hogs, as 
they sometimes turn the tables upon them. 

IN'are is at the head of navigation for the larger 
steamers of the three lines running on this river, 



27 

on account of tlie fact that, between this point and 
Honda there are several strong rapids which only 
the smaller steamers, with comparatively greater 
power, are able to ascend, except by putting a 
cable ashore and hauling themselves through ; a 
tedious operation. Ours is one of those that go up. 
We receive on board four men and two women 
who have come down from Medellin bound for 
Bogota. 

Antiochia is the richest State in New Granada, 
or the ''United States of Colombia" as it is 
modernly called. It is the State in which the 
Ultramontane rebellion broke out against the Gov- 
ernment last year, and which cost several bloody 
battles to put down. The Government is said to 
have had 40,000 men in the field during this out- 
break, and foreigners who witnessed the battle of 
Garrapata report that both sides fought with des- 
peration. One of our new passengers, about fifty 
years of age, of rough looking exterior and dog- 
matic expression of countenance, is addressed as 
General, and reported to be one of the most char- 
acterized leaders of the rebellion. 

Antiochia was originally populated by Israelites 
from Spain, who, like the ancient Irish race, after 
defending their original faith with great zeal and 
endurance, finally turned about and became more 
Roman than the Romans , and are to-day the most 
stubborn defenders of the Roman Church in this 
Spanish Republic. Their reactionary power is 
now believed to be broken, and many of them 



28 

have been expatriated ; but the sentinels of Father 
Beckx are wily and patient, and they may never 
be said to be vanquished till pnblic education is 
beyond their reach. 

The 26th, the mountains are appearing more 
frequently and nearer to the river, which now and 
then opposes to us a rapid current. The country 
looks more habitable, fever and ague is not so 
glaringly staring us in the face as we look out on 
either side. Patches of rude cultivation are now 
once in a while met with, in which chocolate trees 
among others appear. These, we are told, ar6 the 
most profitable for cultivation in this country, be- 
cause, after planting, they produce for many years 
without further attention than that of collecting 
its fruit and preventing thei^ being choked by other 
growths. The coffee tree also prospers here with 
the same slight attention. We stop at a ham- 
let to discharge some bags of salt, (worth as much 
here as bags of potatoes with us), where a group 
of idle and squalid-looking boys are gathered 
on the bank against which our boat is tied. 
Suddenly, a wild commotion arose among them, 
and down they go on hands and knees appar- 
ently engaged in a hard tussel with something 
concealed under the tangled grass. Presently 
they rise up, drawing out and bearing away with 
them in triumph, a young Aligator, about a yard 
long, which they had stumbled over with their 
bare feet and legs, while it lay concealed, and 
which they now hold firmly grasped by its neck, 
legs and tail. 



29 

Proceeding on our way, from time to time vary- 
ing our sensations by hurling a rifle ball at the 
huge reptiles as they lay sunning themselves upon 
the banks, we see a large gathering of Buzzards 
ahead of us, many sitting upon the trees, and 
others circling in the air over them. Whoever 
has lived in the inter-tropics knows that this means 
something lying dead at that spot. As we pass, 
we see floating in the water under the bank, the 
carcass of an Aligator that, no doubt, has fallen a 
victim to some traveling rifleman who has gone 
before us. We mention this circumstance in or- 
der to introduce a curious observation hitherto 
unknown to us. 

Among this crowd of vultures, are several in 
size and form exactly like the rest, but in color, 
some are wholly, some partially, wMte. These are 
called here, the King Buzzards^ on account of the 
deference shown to them by the common or black 
Bazzards, viz. : Whenever one or more of these 
King Bazzards alight upon a carcass, all of the 
black Buzzards instantly leave it and patiently 
await the good will and pleasure of the King to 
take his departure, on which they return in crowds 
to their feast. 

We are meeting now with frequent strong cur- 
rents, and as our woodpile on board is fast disap- 
pearing, we are on the lookout for woodpiles on 
shore. One after another of their usual sites is 
reached and passed, but no gracious woodpile 
consents to cheer us in our now fast-increasing 



30 

anxiety. What are we to do ? When our wood 
is enMrely consumed, we can make no more steam, 
and can go no farther up the stream. We will be 
compelled to tie up to the bank or drift down at 
the mercy of the currents. If we tie up we may 
remain many days waiting for a boat to come 
down and sell us some wood in passing us ; we 
may cut green fuel with which it will be difficult 
to make steam enough to run against the swollen 
river ; or what would be more practicable, we 
could despatch men along the bank up stream in 
search of a friendly woodpile to be conveyed down 
to us on a raft to be constructed for that purpose. 
We stand for several hours with the Captain 
upon the upper deck, almost silently observing 
. his increasing anxiety, as he, with glass in hand, 
stands scanning along the banks as each successive 
bend in the river brings new stretches into view, 
and hear the successive reports of the engineer, 
viz. : Wood for one hour, sir ! Wood for half an 
hour. Wood for ten minutes more ! and when, 
just in our greatest emergency we discover a 
diminutive woodpile, enough for a half hours' run, 
what a thrill of joy and relief ran through the 
minds of all, and as we reach the spot we re- 
ceive the w^elcome information of another and 
more ample w^oodpile less than a half hours' run 
higher up. Our wood has held out remarkably, 
as if it comprehended our difficulty. We have 
steamed nearly ten hours since wooding, and when 
we got the welcome relief, we had consumed our 



31 

last stick. We could not have run five minutes 
longer. 

After wooding at the two stations, we proceed, 
and at nightfall tie up at the entrance to a gorge 
and bend in the river, through which the water 
is rushing with great velocity. Scarcely have we 
secured our boat to the bank, when loud cries for 
help come down to us from the gorge above, and 
an overturned raft, half torn in pieces, with a man 
clinging to it, come rapidl}^ sweeping around the 
bend. Quick as thought (for no time is to be 
lost) the Captain ordered a line thrown out to him 
from our lower deck, which, luckily he catches, 
and giving it two or three turns around some of 
the poles of the raft, it swings in by the force of 
the current so as to strike the side of our steamer, 
where the deck hands are in readiness to catch 
his extended arms and drag him on to our lower 
deck, scarcely eighteen inches above the surface 
of the river. 

On a lightly constructed bamboo raft is a very 
common mode of descending this river, and often, 
cargoes of considerable value are risked upon 
these frail structures, notwithstanding the fact 
that, owing to its swift current the raft is over- 
turned if it strikes any obstacle in its course, or, 
at least, it is very liable to this accident, thereby 
feeding its human freight to the Aligators. 

In the present case, the Captain, who is a pious 
man, is copious in the expressions of his convic- 
tion that it was by especial Providential design 



32 



that he was with his boat just where he was at 
that particular moment of time, in order to save 
tiie life of this fellow being. This did, indeed 
seem Providential ; but on learning the history of 
the accident more fully, it proved that the man 
and a comrade upon the raft were safe in the mid- 
dle of the stream until they heard or saw the 
steamer approach, and believing it would continue 
Its course through the gorge of the river, felt 
themselves m danger of being carried by the swift 
current underneath the steamer's bow or paddle- 
wheel. They therefore pulled lustily at their oars 
to get near the shore. Here they struck the pro- 
jecting limbs and bushes on the surface which 
overturned their raft, throwing them and their 
trunk, containing their little all, into the water 
His comrade, it was found, had clung to the bush- 
es and dragged himself ashore, while he had 
climbed upon the wreck and came down to us, as 
described. This history of the event exactly re- 
versed the Captain's theory, placing him and his 
boat as the cause of the disaster, and we hear 
no more of Providential design. 

Baring our eighth and last day upon the river 
we chmb a succession of rapids stronger than 
any heretofore encountered. The Captain has 
frequently boasted of his boat as the only one 
that could always go up these rapids without put- 
ting out a hawser on shore by which to haul 
through. 

The time of trial came, and he begged us to no- 



33 

tice liow liis boat would behave when she fairly 
struck into the strongest rapids. We stand by 
him on the upper deck and watch her as she 
plows her way into it until the waters pour in 
torrents over her bows, flooding the forward deck 
and running over her sides. Steadily she presses 
forward under the highest pressure of steam she 
dares to carry (100 lbs. to the square inch) her 
progress each instant becoming less and less. 
The Captain stands motionless, and in breathless 
anxiety watching her movement with the attention 
of a man who feels his reputation interested in her 
triumph. We are three-fourths of the way through 
the rapid, but her progress is no longer percepti- 
ble. She is trembling in the balance, and the 
Captain' s face betrays strong emotions, as if a se- 
rious disaster may be hanging over his steamer 
and all on board of her. 

A feeling of strange uncertainty as to what this 
might portend creeps over us as we take in the sit- 
uation, and venture an exploratory, ''She is 
motionless r^ to the silent Captain. "Oh, no! 
she is going through ! " he so hastily replies as to 
betray how deep is his emotion. 

But alas! notwithstanding his assurance, her 
strength is not equal to the herculean task. She 
is already losing ground, and it is clearly evident 
to all on board that she is being borne back by the 
current in the direction of dangerous rocks. It is 
a thrilling moment, and we struggle with our 
fears in order to collect all our wits to be ready 



34 



for any emergency'. At this critical moment the 
pilot strikes the signal to shut oif the steam, so as 
to let her drift with sufficient velocity to gain 
steerage way ; when, lo ! she shoots down stream 
like an arrow, clearing the rocks in handsome 
style and bringing up by letting on the steam when 
some distance below. 

The success of this movement has a magical 
eifect in relieving the painful anxiety of the passen- 
gers to whom it is a new experience, showing 
them that the situation was not as critical as it 
seemed. The captain is, however, very much 
chagrined at the temporary defeat of his favorite 
steamer, and evidently feels it severely. 

The pilot again signals the engineer to go for- 
ward, and we again near the rapid for the second 
round, in what has now all the appearances of an 
unequal combat. 

The current looks to be, however, less strong 
nearer to the left bank, than where we had met 
with defeat, and the pilot brings the steamer up 
cautiously, keeping farther towards that side. He 
signals the engineer to put on all the steam it 
wU be safe to carry, and again dashes into the 
angry flood. This time the struggle is by no 
means so exciting, the element of danger that 
seemed to menace us before with destruction, has 
disapeaared in the demonstrated ability of the 
craft to retreat to a place of safety in case it is van- 
quished. We nevertheless watch its progress 
with much interest, as we are all desirous of fin- 
ishing our trip to Honda on this day. 



35 

Alas !. the second and third time we are driven 
back, and all, except tlie captain and pilot, are 
thinking of the recourse of running out a line on 
shore for the purpose of hauling the boat up, the 
recourse of other boats. On the fourth trial the 
pilot goes carefully upwards, very near to the 
bank, with sounding poles constantly going to 
avoid getting aground. Slowly the Covfianza 
creeps along, feeling her way till she is fairly 
into the rapid, then turning her nose a little off 
from shore, she shoots diagonally across and is 
through the rapid just as she nears the opposite 
bank. A rousing cheer arose, letting off the pent 
up anxiety of the passengers, and an air of tri- 
umph illumined the countenance of the captain as 
he took his hat off to the pilot who had found a 
soft place in that powerful torrent. 

The mountains are now near to us, and we are 
able to see that they are of sand- stone formation 
mostly covered with alluvium and well wooded up 
to their very tops. Only in some rare spots do 
they present bare sides, and these are perpendicu- 
lar. Some of them stand isolated , with well round- 
ed summits covered by a rich growth of forest 
trees and inter-tropical vegetation, then dropping 
in perpendicular walls on every side for apparent- 
ly two to five hundred feet, thus giving them a 
castellated form, and at the foot of these perpen- 
dicular walls is spread out a well- wooded slope 
all around, then to fall again in bare perpendicu- 
lar precipices. On the face of these precipitous 



36 

walls the strata are clearly visible in perfectly hori- 
zontal layers, showing they have sntfered no dis- 
turbance since their deposit. Of the mode of for- 
mation of these isolated mountains we will have 
something to say farther on. They present an 
nnique and striking appearance. 

HONDA AND THE MAGDALENA VALLEY. 

AYe reached Honda on the evening of the 27thj 
just eight days from Barranqnilla, a remarkably 
quick passage, and but three days behind the 
Murillo which left Barranqnilla ten days ahead 
of us, although we made scarcely more than twent j 
miles on the last day up the rapids. 

Honda is a town of old Spanish oidgin now con- 
taining about three thousand inhabitants, among 
v/hich is a German and North American element 
engaged in buying and shipping down the river, 
Quinia, Hides, Coffee, Chocolate, and other prod- 
ucts of the country, to be reshi]3ped out of the 
country at Barranqnilla. The town is nestled in a 
narrow mountain gorge at the confluence of the 
Guali with the Magdalena, in ^mq degrees North 
latitude ; and many leagues up the valley of the 
Guali are extended curiously constructed table 
lands or llanos. On our return from the capitol 
we will explore these llanos and give some ac- 
count of their geological characters. At present 
we are to take mules from this point for Bogota ; 
but we now have the necessary data to enable us 



37 

to group into one view this vast valley of the Mag- 
dalena from here to the sea, which we have just 
traversed. In its broad expanse extending from 
the Cordilleras of the Pacific States of Panama and 
the Cauca, east to the mountain boundary of 
Venezuela, and from the coast in eleven degrees 
north, up to Nare on the fifth parallel, it is a vast, 
swampy plain, but little above the sea level ; and 
at a time not very remote, geologically speaking, 
all within these limits has been an estuary of the 
Carribean sea. 

The great heat of these regions evaporates and 
takes up into the atmosphere an abundance of 
water which the winds waft up the mountain sides, 
till the lower temperature of these upper regions 
condenses these vapors into clouds, which rising 
still higher, are, by the lowering temperature of 
saoceeding elevations, and by the changed electri- 
cal conditions of the atmosphere, precipitated in 
torrents of water down the mountains' sides, wear- 
ing them away and ploughing them into furrows 
and gullies, and carrying down with them vast 
quantities of detritus, which the Magdalena, gath- 
ering up with its tributary waters from all the in- 
tricate masses and jumble of mountains up to and 
beyond the equator, has, during many centuries, 
been depositing as sediment until it has completely 
filled up this estuary with them ; an operation 
which is still progressing with astonishing rapidity 
in the anchorage at the present mouth of the 
' ' Muddy Magdalena. ' ' The captain of the steam- 



38 «■ 

ship Etna assures us that within two or three years, 
during which he has been casting his anchor here, 
the bottom has risen several feet ; and that the 
water will at the present rate, soon become so shal- 
low as to compell him to anchor further out or 
keep in the channel of the river which is clearly 
marked, by its turbid current, far out to sea. 

This great plain of the Magdalena valley, as it 
gradually arose above the surface of this arm of the 
sea, was taken possession of by vegetable growths. 
Moisture and heat, the two chief instruments of 
vegetation ; the one the veliicle, the other the motor 
2Jowei\ both here so abundant, have spread over it 
a most luxuriant growth of forest trees and under- 
growth, and matted them together with creeping 
and climbing plants, into one impenetrable mass of 
jungle ; a chosen home of the Orocodilia^ which 
find in its solitudes and lagoons the conditions fa- 
vorable to their propagation. During the rainy 
seasons of the year a considerable portion of this 
extensive region is overflowed ; consequently, in 
the succeeding dry seasons, is reeking in deadly 
miasms, quickly fatal to all except the strongest 
of those straggling natives, born and reared under 
their toxic influences. These are mostly dwellers 
along the river banks, attracted, no doubt, by an 
€asy subsistence upon the fish which abound in its 
waters. These also furnish the principal food of 
the huge saurian reptiles of which we have spoken, 
and many stories are told illustrative of their sa- 
gacity in their modes of entrapping their prey. 



39 

We ourselves saw them ranged across the moutlis 
of tributaries and in the eddies at the ends of sand- 
banks, with the huge upper jaw, or its nose, pro- 
jecting above the water in quiet poise until some 
hapless *'Bagare" (a large fish, 4 to 6 feet long) 
attempts to cross above the submerged lower max- 
ilary, when, with a sudden gulp the victim is rais- 
ed above the surface, a mangled and convulsive 
mass, and then disappears forever. These dan- 
gerous reptiles are also said to hide themselves just 
deep enough beneath the surface of the turbid 
water so as not to be seen, opposite the cattle farms, 
and lay in wait for the calves as they come down 
to drink, or for the children who come to fill their 
gourds for domestic uses ; when with a stunning 
blow of their tail, or a sudden rush, they snatch 
and drag their terrified victims down to their slimy 
dens. A hut was pointed out to us in passing, 
where two children have been thus snatched away 
within a few months. 

Two varieties of these reptiles inhabit this river. 
The true crocodile, with pointed snout, growing 
from fifteen to twenty-five feet long ; and the alli- 
gator, with snout shaped like that of the pike, 
being usually from ten to fifteen feet in length. 

It is a curious fact that on the mountain sides 
all around this vast home of pestilential fever, the 
Cincona, or Chincona tree grows wild and ever 
flourishing, elaborating in its bark that precious 
alkaloid which is their specific antidote ; that price- 
less boon to humanity which is the chief article of 



40 

export from tliis country. The Bane and Anti- 
dote staring at eacli other in close proximity. 

The Magdalena in its entire course through this 
sedimentary plain is divided into strands by a 
nearly constant succession of islands, varying in 
size from a quarter of a mile to twenty-five miles 
in length, and from a few hundred feet to ten miles 
wide. The formation of these islands is illustrated 
with singular clearness to modern observation by 
an island that was pointed out to us in passing it, 
as marking the site of the wreck of one of the 
first steamers placed upon this river, some twenty- 
five to thirty years ago. The steamer struck a snag 
and sunk in the middle of the river, thus consti- 
tuting a nucleus for the accumulation of the detri- 
tus brought down by the current, and this accu- 
mulation soon rose above the surface, and has in- 
creased in size, until it is now a half-mile long 
and a quarter wide, and as densely wooded as are 
the opposite shores, wliich have been excavated 
by the currents to accomodate the growth of the 
island. 

Very interesting illustrations of the process by 
which rivers tend to become tortuous more and 
more, especially in their course through sediment- 
ary plains, are here to be observed. Water ob- 
viously flows in the direction of the least resist- 
ance, and in any deflection from a right or 
straight line, its current is precipitated against the 
concave bank, with greater force than elsewhere, 
consequently causing more attrition and wearing 



41 

away at that point. The concavity is thus con- 
stantly becoming excavated or deepened, while a 
corresponding lilling up by sedimentary deposits 
is going on opposite to it on the other bank, the 
convexity keeping pace with the concavity. The 
increasing concavity deflects more and more the 
course of the current in a direction diagonally 
across the stream towards the opposite bank below, 
and against which it is projected, greater attri- 
tion and excavation at that point being the result, 
constituting another bend. This must be the chief 
factor in the meanderings of rivers through sedi- 
mentary plains or extinct estuaries like the one 
under consideration ; bending and doubling upon 
themselves until sometimes the concavities are ex- 
cavated entirely through, joining the river at 
another point of the wandering stream, then by 
forming what is called on our Mississippi, a 
''cut off," also to be seen on the Connecticut at 
the foot of Mount Holyoke. One example of this 
shortens the Magdalena by several leagues. The 
currents, after making these amputations, throw 
sedimentary deposits into the mouths of these 
cut offs in passing them, thus building up sand 
bars and forming them into "bayous" very nu- 
merous on our lower Mississippi. In this wearing 
away of the banks large trees are undermined, 
and fall into the river, are carried down b}^ the 
current until they get aground and become fasten- 
ed by the sand which is soon heaped by currents 
around the part in contact with the bottom (usual- 



43 

\y the roots), and their trunks pointing down 
stream under the water become dangerous snags 
for a time until their locations become well known 
to navigators, and eventually many of them be- 
come nuclei around which islands are formed. 

HOI^DA TO BOGOTA. 

We were kindly entertained in Honda by our 
fellow countryman, Mr. Henry Hallam, from 
Stonington, Connecticut, and his amiable family, 
and on the day following our arrival we took 
mules and commenced our four days journey to 
the capital city. Two native medical students 
were to be our traveling companions, and between 
us three we required seven animals, viz : three for 
saddles and four for our joint equipage, at ten 
dollars for each beast. The proprietor of the 
mules assures us that tliey are all of very superior 
quality, and judging from the general run of 
pack mules loading with imported goods for 
Bogota, we are inclined to believe his assertion. 

From Honda, scarce 600 feet above the level of 
the sea, to the highest pass in the mountains, from 
which we are to descend upon the table land of 
Bogota, it is but thirteen leagues, in which dis- 
tance we have to reach an elevation of nine thou- 
sand feet above the sea level by a rugged mule 
path, said to be the best public road in the coun- 
try, and over which all merchandise for the cap- 
ital is transported by pack mules. From the 



43 

above mentioned elevation a good carriage road 
descends to the plain, some five Imndred feet low- 
er, and across it to Bogota about eight leagues 
beyond. 

As in all Spanish countries, preparations move 
slowly and it was nearly three o' clock before our 
train could be got into marching order and in move- 
ment forward. The path at first wound its rug- 
ged way over the flanks of the mountains that 
rise from the very banks of the river, one league 
after we started out from the "Bodegas de Bogo- 
ta" about two miles below Honda upon the op- 
posite or eastern bank. 

The uninitiated mule rider, yet unacquainted 
with the sure-footedness of this useful beast, is 
soon and with frequency, startled as he finds his 
animal scrambling up a steep precipice and then 
on the brink of another to be descended only by 
help of the mule tracks worn into the smooth 
sandstone surface of the precipitous declivity. 
Carefully the patient beast works its way down- 
ward, with the skill of a mountain goat, and it is 
positively marvelous how the pack mules can 
make these ascents and descents with their heavy 
burthens without frequently tumbling with them 
to sure destruction. One"carga" or mule load 
is considered to be two hundred and fifty pounds, 
but they are often over burthened. We have seen 
them stagger under their heavy loads even on 
level ground and become so exhausted as to be 
compelled to drop with them upon the earth in 



44 

order to recuperate their exhausted strength, but 
their instincts of self-preservation always prevent 
their giving up at these dangerous places. 

We proceed until darkness makes it necessary 
for us to seek the first available shelter ; a mud 
house where some fifty mules have been relieved 
of their packs and are being turned into an en- 
closed bushy pasturage by the wayside. Our 
equipage, wrappped as is the custom here, in 
coarse tarred cloth to protect it from heavy showers 
liable to be met with on the route, is discharged 
from our pack animals and deposited as closely 
as possible under the projecting eaves of the 
thatched roof, our saddles gathered inside the hut 
to which we three are welcomed as the sole oc- 
cupants for the night, of its only apartment, if we 
except one four by six feet partitioned ofi* for the 
vending of ' ' Guarapo ' ' (fermented molasses and 
water) to the muleteers, served out to them at a 
quartillo (Sj cents) per gourd, through a square 
pTiole in the outer wall. Nearly all the huts by the 
wayside have this hole in the wall, or Gruaraparia, 
as they call their stand, and this is apparently, 
with most of the huts scattered along the high- 
jway, their ''raison d'etre." Some ten or twelve 
'muleteers (arrieros) build little fires and cook and 
partake of their humble repast in the open space 
in front, after which they smoke the narcotic weed 
and dispose themselves upon their packs or upon 
the bare ground as best they can ; but all of 
them exposed to the open air, which is damp 



45 

and chill with the condensing mists of this iieated 
clime. Hardy as the brutes they drive, they seem 
to suffer nothing from this reckless exposure. 

Our single arriero took our seven beasts to the 
pasture, and we went in to survey our quarters 
and inquire what kind of fare it might be possible 
to procure for supper. 

Four bare mud walls, innocent of whitewash, 
about ten feet square with open doorway at front 
and back, (without doors) and a third doorway 
leading into the Guaraparia above described ; a 
bare mud floor of well trodden native earth, a 
rough wooden bench to serve as table, two broken 
stools and a perch about two feet long across two 
of the corners two feet from the floor, on each of 
which a rooster is tied, describes our new 
quarters. The roosters are a welcome sight to 
famishing travelers, as it suggests eggs and per- 
haps chickens ; but this proves a vexing illusion. 
A bowl of poor soup, a piece of tough, sun dried 
beef, from which it has been made, some fried 
plantains and a bottle of beer is our only con- 
solation in these dreary surroundings, and a sharp 
appetite makes the best of it. 

When our meal is finished and debris cleared 
away we immediately spread our straw mat upon 
the table, which although shorter than we, is less 
dangerous than sleeping upon the damp earth, 
especially as we are suifering from a bronchial 
aff'ection acquired our first night on the river. 
Our companions have just spread their mats npon 



46 

the eartli, as if quite used to such accommodation, 
when our muleteer appears and reports with agita- 
tion that one of our saddle mules has escaped from 
him and taken the back track for his home. This 
is unwelcome news, as over so dangerous a road, 
night pursuit is out of the question ; but we being 
but four hours upon our route we hear it without 
consternation, the proprietor hangs mats to close 
the doorways, and we dispose ourselves for the 
night. In doing so we suggest to the landlord 
that if we could move the table into the corner 
the wall would prevent our pillow from escaping 
from us during sleep : but the fowl and its roost, 
as well as a pile of rubbish under the table, pre- 
vent the suggested improvement, besides mine 
host ventures the thought that perhaps contact 
with the wall might expose us to be stung by a 
strolling scorpion or centipede, which kind sug- 
gestion is efficacious in making us content with 
the table just as it stands. Buttoning our travel- 
ing coat and drawing firmly on a silk cap, we roll 
ourselves in our blanket, draw in our feet which 
project beyond the table, and actually sleep, 
awaking several times to rest our aking bones by 
turning upon the other side. 

Next morning we are able to procure an excel- 
lent cup of chocolate and then ascertain that the 
escaped mule is one ridden by one of our com- 
panions, and it was agreed that he should mount 
our beast, it being the first caught, and return for 
the fugitive, while we two await his coming back 
to us. 



47 

After Ms departure we went to the enclosure or 
bushy pasture to witness the finding and capture 
of the pack mules, and see them led out one by 
one past the landlord, who collects ten cents for 
each animal as he passes out, this being the price 
of their entertainment. This dime per diem is all 
these poor brutes cost their owners for their keep- 
ing. They bear their clumsy burthens from early 
morn till nightfall without further nourishment. 
As they file out one by one we notice three- 
fourths of them, at least, have large raw sores 
which the rude pack-saddles have made upon 
their backs. We could not help thinking what 
must be the sufferings of these dumb servants as 
they stagger through their long day' s march in 
this mutilated condition ; but alas ! our sympa- 
thies can take no practicable shape and are there- 
fore of no avail to them, except to those that 
were carrying the equipage of our own party. One 
of our beasts had fallen several times, the day pre- 
vious, under his heavy load and got bad usage 
from our muleteer whom we discover is scarcely 
superior in intelligence to the other brutes. We, 
therefore, now add an extra beast to our pack- 
train, in order to make the load of each lighter, 
also an extra muleteer of somewhat more intel- 
ligence than the first. The hire of the mule is 
ten dollars for the trip, and that of the muleteer 
seventy-five cents per diem, he furnishing his own 
entertainment. 

Our pack-train, reorganized as above, starts 



48 



■I 



onward about eiglit o'clock, a. m., and we and 
our remaining companion set ourselves upon the 
liard wood bench in front of the cabin or stroll 
about the premises to kill time while awaiting the 
return of our friend. Soon we discover that if ids 
are satisfied to be left behind by our train, our 
companion's saddle mule is not, and he manifests 
his discontent by desperate efforts to break away 
from the wonderfully strong thong of raw hide 
with which he is fastened by loops about his neck 
and nose. So violent and continued are his 
struggles that we greatly fear he will either dis- 
locate his neck or break away and escape, there- 
by causing us still farther and vexatious delays. 
Consequently we persuade our chum, though 
with some difiiculty, as he is already demoralized 
by the fierce brute, to mount him and follow in the 
wake of our pack-train, leaving ourselves to wait 
alone, the return of our absent fellow-traveler. 
It is almost midday when he at last arrives, and 
we immediately proceed on our way. 

We have now left the river and are soon climb- 
ing the mountains. Across rivulet and up rugged 
ascents, our path at first winds its serpentine 
course ; then in sharp zigzags up steep acclivities 
we climb, till we find our saddles working their 
way gradually backwards and threatening to slip 
off with us over the sloping haunches. A halt is 
made to readjust matters upon a surer basis by 
tight buckling of the girths, and securing our sad- 
dles by means of a breastplate of rope, after which 



49 

we continue our march. Anon halting to enjoy 
brief glimpses of the expanding views that are 
occasionally opening behind us, we stride upwards 
and upwards in our precipitous path, now through 
deep gullies which the rains have washed out, 
now over broken pavements of rough stones placed 
there to prevent such gullies ; onward we climb in 
admiration of the wonderful endurance of our 
beasts, who appear little jaded by this heavy 
work. Sometimes our path is obstructed by de - 
scending mule trains, loaded with bales of Quinia 
bark bound for Honda ; but with few interruptions 
our progress upwards is continuous. Sometimes 
a dense bank of heavy mists or fog gathers round, 
warning us to don our rubber coats, and anon it 
comes down upon us in copious showers of rain. 
In vain we inquire at every wayside hut if the in- 
mates could prepare us something with which to 
break our fasts, until at last, about 4 o'clock p. m., 
in the midst of a drenching rain, we reach a Posada 
that bears the promising title of "El Consuelo," 
where we rest for an hour and are able to procure 
a rude breakfast. 

The shower has ceased, and a momentary break 
in the cloud below us reveals to our gaze a long 
stretch of the valley of the upper Magdalena, 
through which the river winds like a huge ser- 
pent, stretching itself out to many leagues away, 
now the clouds closing in, it vanishes like a dis- 
solving view. We resume our saddles and climb 
onward. The mountain side up which our path 



50 

leads us, represents an angle of about forty-five 
degrees to the horizontal, and the slippery path, in 
its sharp zigzags, about twenty -five. This, in these 
steep places, is roughly paved to prevent washing 
away ; but our beasts prefer to scramble up in the 
muddy gutter on the inner side of the path. The 
atmosphere is heavy, and the yelling cry of the 
muleteers comes down to us, at regular intervals, 
from above. We are traveling in the clouds, and 
they wrap themselves around us and shut out 
from our sight all that wonderful panorama, ex- 
tending itself in grander and more varied pro- 
portion, behind and below us. 

About 6 o'clock we are above the clouds and 
looking forward, down into a vast, cloudless valley, 
apparently shut in by mountains on every side 
like a huge basin ; though a small river coiling 
through it explains at once why it is not a 
mountain lake. The mountain sides all around 
it are deeply furrowed into innumerable valleys, 
and these give signs of husbandry in the shape of 
scattering cattle farms and some fields of corn ; 
and in the bottom of the basin the village of 
Guaduas spreads its tiled roofs under our gratified 
eyes, although it is still two leagues distant, and, 
in the now jaded condition of our beasts, will cost 
us two more tedious hours to reach, down steep 
declivities and devious pathways. 

It is quite dark as we enter the outskirts of the 
town, and there comes to us, from among the scat- 
tering lamplights by the wayside, a hail, in which 



51 

we recognize the familiar voice of our companion 
who had preceded us, mounted upon the fractious 
mule. This enterprising beast having gone 
thus far, has utterly refused to proceed farther, 
and not even the most violent forms of coercion 
jet invented for such cases, have availed to induce 
him to reconsider this determination. Our friend 
had succumbed to the situation, removed his sad- 
dle and sat demurely waiting for us to arrive, and, 
if possible, help him out of his humiliating diffi- 
culty. The Posada, or Public House, where we 
may obtain lodgings, is still a half-mile distant, 
so we order the culprit to be brought up and re- 
saddled, in the expectation chat the companion- 
ship of his comrades might soften his stubborn- 
ness and induce him into sufficient amiability to 
accompany us into the town. We are not disap- 
pointed in this reasonable expectation, and we 
reach our lodgings without further obstacle. 

We find Guaduas to be quite an important town 
for this country, with several paved streets, and 
said to contain from four to five thousand inhabi- 
tants, a public square or market place, etc. ; but 
is very hot, owing to its situation in the bottom of 
a basin. We find a fair supper and good lodgings 
at the "Fonda," soon forgeting all the fatigues of 
the day in sound and peaceful slumber. 

We have not yet overtaken our pack train, 
though it cannot now be far in advance of us. 
After taking our customary morning coffee we re- 
sume our march up the mountains, overtaking our 



52 

train about nine o'clock, at a tienda, where on 
enquiry, we ascertained tliey would be able to pre- 
pare for us a rude breakfast ; but being assured 
by our arrieros that we might do better farther up, 
we imprudently credit the information and go for- 
ward with our train. Up and upwards we wend 
our toilsome journey, hours come and go while we 
anxiously enquire at every wayside shanty for the 
coveted breakfast, but all in vain. Not an egg, 
nor a chicken, nor a piece of bread arid cheese is 
to be had for whatever reward may be offered. 
Moodily we brood over the thought of the unreli- 
ability of our informants as we toil silently up- 
wards. A new gleam of hope now and again dawns 
upon us, as we, from time to time, meet a down 
coming mule train. 

These arrieros can perhaps tell us how far it is 
to the next Posada ? ''Very near! About a half 
hour, ' ' is the stereotyped reply ; but our confidence 
in these people becomes less and less as the hours 
come and go, while we still struggle onward with 
hope deferred. Two o'clock comes and we again, 
as yesterday, look down into a valley before us, 
which we have to pass through, and the town of 
Yillete is lying cozily at its bottom, though a long 
descent is intervening between us and the town. 
It cannot be reached before three and a half o' clock, 
and we are famishing for want of food. We de- 
scend but a short distance when three or four 
bright-faced children, all nearly of the same size, 
attract our attention to a small hut near the path, 



53 

beside wMcli a thatched roof poised upon four 
posts, indicated the hopeful spirit of its occupants, 
aspiring to move into more ample quarters in the 
near future. As we ride up to the cabin an intelli- 
gent looking boy, about twelve years of age, re- 
turns our salutations, and the mother, whose face 
we have seen reflected in those of the children, 
stands in the background and kindly consents to 
prepare something upon which we can breakfast. 

She has three eggs, she says, and she can fry us 
some plantains, and warm up a piece of cold meat 
and some potatoes ; but we will be obliged to eat 
them with our fingers, out of one wooden plate, 
because the soldiers had stopped there, in passing 
from the capital, during the late rebellion, and 
carried away all her small store of dishes, after 
mating the food she hospitably prepared for them. 

The hearty good will of this woman pleases us, 
and we gratefully assure her that her humble meal 
will be wholly acceptable to our famishing stom- 
achs, and set ourselves down to converse with her 
children while she prepares our breakfast. Seven 
children, of which the twelve year old boy is the 
eldest, is her whole fortune. She and her children 
are squatted here upon the mountain side raising 
a few vegetables and chickens, while her husband 
earns a few shillings on the road as a muleteer. 
'*You must have met him upon the road," she 
says, and tries to make us remember him by her 
description. She seems pleased to see us enjoy 
our repast, and when we ask the price of our break- 



54 



fast for three, slie modestly replies, ' ' tres reales ' ' 
(three dimes). This price is too ridiculous for 
such a breakfast, so we give her ten, for which 
she exhibits marked gratitude and desires us to 
drink some beer at her expense, which we however 
decline. At 4 o'clock we arrive in Yillete, a 
village of perhaps 2,000 inhabitants, and propose 
to our comrades to stop here for the night, in order 
not to expose ourselves to the risk of bad lodgings 
further on. They have been over this road before 
and assure us that in order to reach comfortably 
the point where the stage is to meet us to-morrow,, 
we ought to proceed two hours farther to-day, and 
they think comfortable lodgings can be found at a 
point which they name. This plan adopted, our 
march is resumed. Our beasts are already jaded 
and we consequently make but slow progress as 
we toil forward for two weary hours, only to find, 
on reaching the appointed bivouac, that no enter- 
tainment is to be had, on account of the recent 
death of the head of the family. 

Completely jaded and worn out as are ourselves 
and our pack animals, no resource is left us but to 
drag ourselves onward, until by sheer good luck 
we may find a friendly shelter. Seven o' clock has^ 
gone by, we can scarcely sustain ourselves in the 
saddle, and our pack mules are now staggering 
from sheer exhaustion. No human habitation is 
near us, and a long and precipitous stretch of 
mountain pathway, in sharp zigzags, lies directly 
before us. We council together and promise the 



00 



muleteers, who, as well as the mules, are begging 
a respite, that the first hut we reach shall be our 
lodging place, so we now all gather up our waver- 
ing resolations for one final effort. All the way, 
as these poor mules stagger up this toilsome ascent, 
it seems to our guilty conscience that the}^ are 
upbraiding us as a heartless task-master ; but no 
pasturage is to be had in these woody mountain 
sides until we reach a cleared space usually sur- 
rounding human residences, and the beasts must 
be famishing and weak with hunger, we there- 
fore ''must be cruel only to be kind " enough to 
urge them forward to where they may find food. 
This we finally reach about 8 o'clock, and find 
shelter for ourselves of the same description as 
that in which we passed our first night out from 
Honda, and, except that the fieas were more nu- 
merous if possible, and that a hard-looking cus- 
tomer slept under our table, we passed the night 
in precisely the same manner. 

We are now more than seven thousand feet 
above the sea level, and the chill atmosphere warns 
us to exchange our linen under-wear for woolen. 
Thus prepared we take our morning chocolate and 
commence our last day' s march up the mountains. 
Our saddle mules, as well as the others, have now, 
either become quite worn out, or accustomed to 
unskillful riders (though our comrades, born in the 
saddle, are scarcely more fortunate than ourselves), 
and it has become a matter of tiresome labor to in- 
duce them to keep pace with the pack-train, urged 



56 

forward by maleteers skilled in the arts of spurring 
them to their utmost endurance. Our sj^mpathies 
for them, so livelj at first, are fast on the wane, 
now that we are compelled to the exhausting labor 
of spurring them at almost every step in order to 
induce them to keep up with the pack mules that 
have to carry far greater burthens. Only yester- 
day we still pitied the hard lot of our dumb ser- 
vants, born to spend comfortless lives in scrambling 
over these horrible roads. But has mine not rest- 
ed through the night 1 and has he not had his daily 
dime' s worth of bushy pasturage 1 So unreasonable 
a brute surely deserves no further sympathy ! Such 
depraved indifference to our climbing proclivities, 
which are blandly indicated to him in such patient 
good humor every two or three seconds of time, 
through the medium of two cruel spurs, should 
certainly merit our strongest indignation. 

The equinimity of the beast, however, far exceeds 
our own, and compels us to seek consolation in 
breathing, not loud but deep, anathemas upon the 
wretch who has deceived us with these worthless 
animals. At the same time we summon all our in- 
genuity to hit upon ways and means of relief from 
this painful mode of progression. After mature 
reflection we adopt the expedient of placing our 
mules under the urging arts of the muleteers as if 
they belonged to the pack-train, while we repre- 
sent the humble roll of equipage. This improve- 
ment proves to be a success, and having our steady 
and continued advance thus secured we betake 



^ 



s 



57 

ourselves to noticing the geological characteristics 
of the country we are passing through. 

The rocks hitherto have been chiefly sandstone 
formations, with occasional cropping out of schis- 
tose slates, all well covered with earth and abun- 
dant vegetation except where the path cuts through 
their corners and high points. As we approach 
the summit, the conglomerate frequently shows it- 
self, and having at last reached what appears to 
be the culmination, a huge pile of this pudding 
stone forms the crowning eminence, the same as 
in the Rigi-Kulm. 

A short and gradual descent soon shows us to 
be between two ridges, with one before us some- 
what higher than the one already passed over, 
the intervening depression being about one league 
in width and thickly covered over with al- 
luvial deposits and vegetable mould, much of it 
cleared lands, furnishing rich pasturage for cattle, 
and thickly strewn with well rounded boulders, 
varying from one to two hundred tons weight, all 
resting in purely alluvial matrices. What an ab- 
sorbing tale of past geologic ages do we here con- 
template ? The well rounded forms of these huge 
masses speak of severe and long continued attri- 
tion; their alluvial matrices entirely disconnecting 
them from the bed rock, together with its great 
difference in character, show them to be strangers 
here ; their location exclusively or nearly so, be- 
tween these culminating ridges, of which the in- 
ner is highest, points to the conclusion that these 



( 



58 

ridges, even after tlieir upheaval, have been cover- 
ed by the sea and these boulders brought hither 
by glaziers which after passing the outer have 
grounded upon the inner ridge, and here melted 
away, leaving these interesting messengers to tell 
us this curious history. 

Between these ridges we breakfast, about eleven 
A. M., at a wayside posada, called iigualarga, and 
get the first sight of wheels we have had since leav- 
ing Barranquilla. The slope up the inner ridge 
from this point is sufficiently gradual for the pur- 
poses of a good wagon road which has been cou: 
structed, and the cargas of merchandise for Bo- 
gota, leave the packmules at this point and are 
hence transported on wheels over a zigzag road. 
The climate is bracing, though the absence of 
our accustomed amount of atmospheric pressure 
is sensibly felt, the cheering, gurgling ripple of the 
mountain rivulets, as their cool, sparkling waters, 
clear as crystal, rush by us, produce in us very 
pleasing sensations. We have, for the nonce, for- 
gotten all our cares in the absorbing sensations 
produced by our surroundings and are in the best 
of humors. 

ISTotwithstanding we have a good road for the 
rest of our journey, the stage will not meet us 
until we pass over the ridge and a league beyond^ 
down into the edge of the great plain or table land, 
so again in the saddle, the clouds gather and ac- 
company us with a drizzling rain, which, owing to 
the altitude, is cold and dampening to our spirits. 



59 

At twelve M. we are on tlie Calm, nine thousand 
feet above the sea, looking down upon the village 
of Facatativa, the stage station, a league distant, 
and of some four to live hundred feet less altitude. 

TABLE LAND OF BOGOTA. 

Strange as it may seem this culminating point 
is covered with a perfectly black vegetable mould 
more than two yards in thickness, with a sub- 
strata many yards in depth of clay beds. As 
we descend, the soil furnishes us with a black 
muddy road, but this strata, which at some remote 
age had been deposited in some swampy depres- 
sion as peat-muck, becomes gradually thinner till 
it disappears a short distance after debouching 
upon the plain. We notice that the waters of 
this inner watershed, as they gather into rivulets 
and rush down by the wayside, have become col- 
ored by percolation through this soil and are in 
strong contrast with the pure crystaline brooks of 
the other side. 

Entering Facatativa through a muddy lane, 
with mud houses ranged on either side, we soon 
find ourselves on the public square at a Fonda or 
Posada with an imposing two story front, and 
riding through the "Porte Cocher," are inside a 
deep courtyard with some twenty rooms ranged on 
both sides of it, dedicated to the lodgement of 
guests. The stage for Bogota will not depart till 
next day at 12 m., and these appear to us comfor- 
table lodgings for the meantime. 



60 

Our exposure upon tlie mountains lias aggrava- 
ted the bronchitis contracted by sleeping in a 
draught of air on that sweltering night of our de- 
parture from Barranquilla, and now threatened 
with an attack of chills we immediately ask to 
have our apartments assigned to us, and after 
partaking of tea and toast, prepared to our order, 
we call for extra blankets and retire to bed. 

Under these combined influences the chill is 
checked and though our head is big with fre- 
quent coughing, we are beginning to feel more 
comfortable, when suddenly a startling suspicion, 
that gradually develops into a horrible reality, 
comes upon us. 

We have been placed in a room that contains, 
hidden in secret recesses, a terrible enemy. In al- 
most breathless anxiety we hold a hurried council 
with ourselves, as this fearful discovery begins to 
take on the form of certainty. We realize how 
powerless we are against so formidable an attack. 
The situation is each instant more thrilling as the 
inevitable crisis rapidly closes in upon us. We 
must somehow escape from this horrible place or 
abide the result of this diabolic encounter. The 
climax arrives, and with a yell of despair we 
spring from our couch and flee in terror towards 
the closed door. Our comrades, still up in adjoin- 
ing appartments, come rushing in response to our 
cry of anguish, and eagerly burst open the now un- 
locked door. What is it ? they both demand in 
the same breath. A million fleas I we gasp, 



61 

through teeth now chattering again with the re- 
turning ague. Like the man who, to escape the 
onset of a furious bull, jumped into a large hol- 
low stump of a tree, only to find he had got into 
a swarm of bees, that made its home there, so we 
had got relief from shaking our teeth out with 
chills by aid of a close room and heavy blankets, 
only to find ourselves beset by more excruciating- 
torture. What is to be done ! We must die with 
chills and fever or be devoured alive by these cruel 
demons. A council of war is held at which it 
Is decided that we shall have more chances for 
life with the fleas. Horrible alternative ! but we 
are reluctantly forced to submit to the ordeal. 
The sufferings of this dreadful night must be 
left to the imaginations of our readers. No wink 
of sleep consented to close our agonizing lids till 
the ''wee small hours ay ant the twa," when at last 
a deep slumber crept over our now exhausted 
body which lasted far beyond the grey dawn. 
When we awoke we sprang instinctively from that 
horrible couch and no possible reward would in- 
duce us to pass another night in those lodgings. 

At midday we take seats in a dilapidated bus 
to finish our journey to Bogota at the foot of the 
mountains, seven leagues away across the table 
land, nearly due east from this point. The 
bus is adorned on its inside panels with flow- 
ers, houses, birds, etc. , painted in glaring col- 
ors. One peacock is perched upon a two-story 
house, its gorgeous tail trailing in the street below 
and its head reaching an equal distance above. 



62 

The road is tolerably good only it is now mud- 
dy in places at wliicli the horses are unable to 
drag us, twelve passengers, through, so we now 
and again are obliged to alight and pick our way 
through the mud. The plain through the entire 
course of this road has a heavy cold soil, caused 
by a substrata of clay, which holds the water in 
it and ruins it for agricultural purposes, so it is 
mostly dedicated to grazing. We are told that in 
some parts potatoes are grown, and on the flanks 
of some of the mountains wheat is successfully 
cultivated. Few trees exist here and the eye 
easily embraces the extent of this plain at a single 
glance, an irregular oval about twenty by thirty 
miles in its two diameters. 

At ^ve o' clock p. m. on the fourth of December, 
we have arrived at the Plaza de San Yictorino, on 
the outskirts of Bogota, and find that no carriages 
are ever permitted to enter the city. So procuring 
a peon to shoulder our valise we start in pursuit 
of our lodgings, recommended by our fellow coun- 
tryman in Honda. Our other equipage has been 
entrusted in Facatativa to an ox team to arrive 
next morning. 

We have occupied four days in a journey of 
sixty-three miles, but we afterwards find we have 
beaten by ten days the telegram that we sent from 
Honda to Bogota, to announce our prospective ar- 
rival. 

The great changes in climate and water have 
worked their usual effects upon our digestive ap- 



63 

paratus and our head is big and feverish from 
now almost incessant coughing, also suffering from 
a marked chill, we can scarcely drag ourselves 
to our lodgings, and on our arrival we instantly 
demand to be shown to our apartments and fur- 
nished with hot tea and extra blankets. 

Our first week in Bogota has passed in almost 
constant suffering, most of the time in bed. Our 
hostess, a very short and stout, giggling, fussy, 
boisterous woman of fifty-five, never tires of tell- 
ing us how much all her boarders become attached 
to her house, and the sharp unmusical voices of 
herself and maiden daughter ring harshly and fre- 
quently through our aching heads and unstrung 
nervous system, as the two ladies petulantly scold 
their illgoverned servants. 

Our apartments open upon a wooden balcony 
leading from the parlor to the dining room and 
kitchen, aiid when the man-servant, a stout half- 
breed Indian, responds to the frequent calls of our 
hostess, he always runs along this balcony with a 
flatfooted splatter with hopskip variations, execu- 
ted in a style well calculated to "bring down the 
balcony," if not the "Aoz^5e," and greatly disturbs 
us in our sick and ner\^ous condition. 

SANTA FE DE BOGOTA 

as it was originally called, has dropped its Santa 
Fe and is now plain Bogota. The thermometer 
ranges between 60 and 65 of Fahrenheit's scale, 



64 

and we are assured by the physicians that it does 
not vary much beyond these limits during the en- 
tire year, if we except the months of June, July 
and August, when the cold winds blow from the 
mountains. The physicians and people boast that 
consumption (Phthisis Pulmonalis) is unknown 
here. We soon discover that although the diur- 
nal changes of temperature are very slight, yet 
there are marked changes in the humidity of the 
atmosphere, and that our bronchitis sympathizes 
considerably with these changes. 

The houses in Bogota are without chimneys, so 
there is no way of warming the apartments, 
which are consequently, at this altitude colder and 
more cheerless than out of doors. The streets, 
when the sun shines, being warm and comfortable 
without overcoat, which we are obliged to put on 
immediately on entering the house. 

Whenever we neglect to do this, we are very soon 
reminded of it by a feeling of chillyness rapidly 
creeping over us. As might be expected under 
these circumstances, the streets in sunny hours are 
swarming with people like bees come out to sun 
themselves. 

Since we have been able to do so, we have daily 
taken long walks through all the streets of the city, 
around its outskirts and up the sides of the moun- 
tain range on the flanks of which it is built. 

Directly behind or over the city, on the summits 
of two of the highest peaks, between which a 
mountain stream rushes down and traverses the 



65 

town, two churches stand out against the sky 
more than tw^o thousand feet above us. Part way 
up the sides of these mountains are numerous 
points from which fine views of the city, spread 
out over the comparatively even slope of the foot- 
hills, may be enjoyed. 

From these standpoints, looking west over the 
city and north and south, the whole table-land is 
before and beneath us in one extended view, 
bounded on all sides by mountain ranges, its long- 
est diameter being from north to south, and w^e 
are standing upon its eastern edge, opposite to the 
junction of its southern and middle thirds. 

The foothills around this great plain are, as far 
as we are able to observe, and by information from 
other sources, formed of clay or are covered by 
thick beds of it to a considerable altitude, this fur- 
nishing material for abundance of sun-dried bricks, 
the chief building element of Bogota, and also 
on its southeastern outskirts a porcelain factory is 
working this material into a fair ordinary quality of 
these products for home consumption. Before 
upheaval, clay seems to have covered the surface ; 
after upheaval this has been washed down from the 
higher altitudes and accumulated in these foothills 
or Hanks of the mountains, and also spread by the 
waters over the bottom of the lake, formed by these 
surrounding mountain chains, and leveling it up 
as we see it before us in the plain. As vegetation 
spread over the mountains, their rapid disente- 
gration by the rains was arrested thereby and 



6G 

the wash carried down an increasing proportion of 
decaying vegetable matter, which spreading itself 
over the bottom of the lake, now constitutes the 
soil that covers the surface. 

That such washing down and accumulations of 
claj has formed these foothills is also made plaus- 
ible by the assurance of an American resident, 
that he, in attempting to bore a well to supply him- 
self with pure water, passed through many 3^ards 
of clay, then a strata of vegetable soil and was 
then baffled by striking into a wooden substance 
below as of hard stumps. 

These waters accumulated until at last finding a 
weak point in their mountain barriers at their 
southern extremity, where is now the the falls of 
Tequendama, they escaped into the tributaries of 
the Magdalena, leaving these table lands high and 
comparatively dry as we now find them. Their 
surface is too level for perfect drainage, and its 
clay bottom holds the water in the upper soil, pre- 
venting its being absorbed into the lower strata. 
Consequently these lands can never be favorable 
to the labors of the agriculturist. A very large 
proportion of the supplies of this market is 
brought in by the Indians who attend on market 
days (Thursdays and Fridays), and who come long 
distances from their little crevices among the moun- 
tains, each bringing a few reals worth of truck 
which they have gathered in order to purchase 
with its proceeds their humble supplies. 

It is a curious spectacle to witness the accumu- 



67 

lation of these people on market days. Among 
other truck which they have brought in during 
this month of December, are most delicious wild 
strawberries, which we have enjoyed on every 
market day since our arrival, and are assured they 
are furnished in abundance every market day in 
the year. 

Flowers are also here in eternal bloom. We 
have rarely seen such large, fine roses, both white 
and red, their corollas, when in full bloom, being 
four inches in diameter by actual measurement. 

Having now given our readers some idea of its 
physical surroundings, we will endeavor to fill 
out these with a brief description of the town. 

Bogota contains about 50,000 inhabitants, has 
very narrow streets, running east and west up and 
down the mountain at an angle of about fifteen 
degrees to the horizontal, and north and south, 
along the mountain' s flank, each having a single 
gutter in the middle, with the waters from the 
mountain rivulets constantly running through 
them. At night they are dimly lighted with oil 
lamps. 

The houses, mostly constructed of sun-dried 
bricks, a fair proportion of them of two stories, are 
roofed with baked clay tiles in the usual Spanish 
intertropical style of architecture. Its principal 
public square is the "Plaza de Bolivar," in its 
centre a bronze statute of the Liberator on a mar- 
ble pedestal, enclosed by iron railing, this pedes- 
tal bearing on its front the words "Simon Bolivar 



68 

Libertadorde Colombia, Peru, Bolivia," and each 
block of limestone composing the other three sides 
of the pedestal, has the name of some one of his 
principal battles cnt into it, forty-one in all. Rep- 
resented in military uniform and cloak, with 
scroll of parchment in his left hand, uncovered 
head and drawn sword, he stands poised upon his 
right foot in the attitude of vigilance. 

On the upper or eastern side of this Plaza stands 
the Cathedral, an edifice chiefly noticeable for its 
imposing size, massive light colored sandstone 
front, and also for its robust interior columns with 
their gilded and burnished capitals. 

Another church immediately adjoins it on the 
right as we face it, and some shops occupy the 
balance of that side of the square, a wide stone 
platform extending its entire length, furnishes to 
the people a favorite rendezvous and promenade 
for the early part of the pleasant evenings. The 
entire south side of this plaza is occupied by the 
half constructed National Palace, which when 
completed is to front on four streets, and will be a 
handsome structure with doric columns in front 
centre. The west and north sides are occupied by 
shops with residences over them. 

Bogota has a well ventilated civic hospital of two 
hundred beds, a Military Hospital of one hun- 
dred, and an Insane Asylum, a new edifice for 
which is in course of construction. It formerly 
contained many and very wealthy monasteries ; 
but the edifices were confiscated in 1862 and are 



69 

now occupied as hospitals, colleges, schools and 
public offices. That of Santo Domingo now oc- 
cupied by the various offices of the National Gov- 
ernment ; that of San Juan de Dios, by Civic 
Hospital and Medical College ; that of San Fran- 
cisco, by the offices of the State of Cundinamarca ; 
El Carmen, as a Military Hospital; San Augustine, 
now occupied as Military Barracks ; San Diego, 
as a Poorhouse ; La Candelaria, by School of En- 
gineers ; Santa Ines, by School of Trades and 
Arts, and that of Santa Clara, now occupied by 
the Normal School for the education of teachers 
for the public schools, are, nearly all of them, 
enormous and costly edifices, regal and palatial 
in their interior apartments, court yards, marble 
fountains and flower gardens, although, present- 
ing an exterior plain even to dreariness. Except 
the first named of these edifices, which has been 
repaired by the Grovernment, most of them are 
showing abundant signs of advancing age. 

These are monuments of the pioneers whose 
wonderful energy and enterprise wins their 
highest appreciation from those, who have tra- 
versed these rugged mountains to this almost in- 
accessible region. 

This appreciation is not augmented by these 
massive vestiges, which only indicate that they 
brought with them the device of that period, that 
of piling up human labor into vast edifices in the 
interest of an institution, in order to increase its in- 
fluence with the masses of the population, by creat- 



70 

ing in their minds the impression of massive , 
grandeur and power, thus awing them into a | 
sense of their own individual insignificance and 
dependance upon the invisible grandeur of which 
these were supposed to be emblematic. 

In countries, where education of the masses is 
very limited, words are powerless to convey to 
their comprehension the advantage of moral faith- 
fulness to God and to their fellowmen, and to im- 
press them with a sense of moral responsibility ; 
but visible forms of mysterious grandeur produce 
in them profound sensations, which, if turned to 
loyal account, justify the employment of this 
stage trick for beneficent purposes. This is why 
the Roman creed has been and always will be more 
acceptable among the aboriginal tribes and the 
uneducated masses than one adapted to those 
classes of more intellectual habits of mind. But 
alas ! they have but too generally been degraded 
by their employment, as the selfish devices of the 
showman for unholy purposes, those of domina- 
tion and material profit, and when urged in the 
interests of these under the guise of pure motives, 
as a reason against the educational development 
of the race they become justly odious to every 
honorable mind. 

SOCIETY IN BOGOTA. 

Owing to the brevity of our visit, we are unable 
to say much of society here. We have got the im- 
pression, that there is in the capital a large pro- 



71 

portion of white blood, some of it unmixed with 
that of the native and African races. The climate 
also, on account of the altitude, gives much fairer 
complexions, than those of lower altitudes. 

On account of the isolated position of this capi- 
tal it is not strange there should be some local 
customs, that attract the curiosity of strangers. 
One is that of dressing their boys of ten and 
twelve years of age in stove pipe hats and frock- 
coats, giving them all the general appearance of a 
pigmy race, until the eye takes in the childish 
faces, then the effect is at first ludicrous, until one 
is habituated to it. Also boy police officers of 
twelve and fourteen years of age, sauntering their 
allotted rounds in soldier uniform, and " Celador," 
(which in Cuba means police captain) lettered on 
the fronts of their caps. We are told that all 
become liable to military duty here at twelve 
years of age. There are also many local customs, 
words and modes of parlance, not interesting, 
however, to English readers. 

The fair sex also appear more in the streets, 
have a more elastic step, more graceful carriage 
of the body than their sisters of lower altitudes, 
and, were it not for the ugly black shawl, which 
they invariably draw closely over the head and 
shoulders, when in the street, and generally in the 
churches, leaving only the face peering out, they 
might be said to present many charming speci- 
mens of their sex, though there are many among 
them, whose flesh tints, the practiced eye of the 



72 

profession would not set down to robust health, 
and this leads us to speak of 



because as such it has been frequently recom- 
mended on account of its remarkably equible 
temperature and bracing atmosphere. 

One of the first observations we make on our ar- 
rival, is that the odor of the closets permeate 
nearly all parts of the house where we have taken 
our lodgings. As we become dissatisfied and 
seek others, we discover that nearly every house 
we enter is in the same condition in varying 
degrees of offensiveness, though the occupants, 
from force of habit, seem quite unconcious of it 
when it is mentioned to them, or aifect to be so. 
On becom-ing better acquainted with the peculiari- 
ties of J:he city, we find this condition to be gener- 
al. Investigation discovers that there is here, no 
subsoil drainage, the conduits from the closets 
running superficially under the flagging stones and 
leading into the surface gutters in the middle of 
the streets. But with such slight declivity these 
conduits do not readily free themselves, anc^. their 
contents gradually soak into and permeate the 
soil until it becomes so impregnated with these ex- 
creta as to taint the air with their effluvia, and is 
even sometimes perceptible to the olfactories in 
the glass of water offered for drink. This is ex- 
plained by the fact that the water supply is con- 
veyed to the hydrants through unglazed clay pipes 
laid in the surface soil and joined by mortar. 



73 

All who know something of the laws of hydraul- 
ics know that a current through such pipes will 
inevitably suck through their pores the juices of 
the surrounding soil and thus take in the impreg- 
nation above referred to. But many houses in the 
less public streets have no closets on the premises, 
their inhabitants defiling the street gutters, and so 
poisoning the atmosphere with vile efluvia as to 
render it irrespirable except to those whom long 
practice has habituated to these noxious influences. 

Thus this city, surrounded by physical condi- 
tions favorable for making it one of the healthiest 
on the planet ; situated over a clay sub-strata of 
easy excavation for the construction of sewers, 
and connecting the closets with them by imperme- 
able walls of masonry ; with abundance of water 
from the mountain streams to flow through them 
in an average declivity, of fifteen degrees thus 
giving a rapid current capable of carrying the sew- 
age down into the plain far away from the city, 
where it would become a source of revenue as an 
appropriate fertilizer of that cold soil ; it does not, 
nevertheless, in its present state, offer the condi- 
tions of salubrity suited to the requirements of 
health-seekers. Reliable sanitary and mortuary 
statistics have not been accumulated here, but our 
conversations with medical men of large experi- 
ence, and queries of the Sisters of Charity in charge 
of the hospital nursing, confirms our well ground- 
ed suspicions that Typhoid fever and Dysentery 
are endemic and frequently epidemic here, being 



74 

by far the most numerous and fatal diseases ; the 
death rate of Bogota, we judge, must be very high. 
Pneumonia is said to be frequent in June, July, 
and August, and Bronchitis is by no means such 
a stranger as the reported absence of Phthisis 
would lead us to expect. Hepatic affections, for- 
merly unknown here, are now of frequent occur- 
rence. No physcian' s certificate of the causes of 
death is required for interment, and one of the 
three cemeteries is uninclosed, the other two are 
enclosed by walls of masonry, and during the last 
two years have kept registers of inhumation s, 
upon which might be based a rough guess as to the 
death rate, but these registers, being incomplete^ 
cannot be relied on, and we have, therefore, not 
consulted them. 

We have been now one month in Bogota and 
our t)ronchial affection becoming gradually more 
aggravated, we resolve, in consequence, to retrace 
our steps down the mountains to a warmer climate 
at Honda, and explore the curious table-lands to 
which we before referred. 

On Saturday morning, January 4th, 1878, we 
take our departure, sleeping the same night at 
Agualarga. There is quite a party on the road 
and we are offered a cot in a room with a man, 
his wife and daughter. Regarding the family pre- 
cinct as to a certain extent sacred we decline, and 
are furnished with a pillow on the sofa in the fam- 
ily-room of the proprietor. Here our Smith & 
Wesson, a handsome weapon, is spirited away 



75 

from under our pillow by disloyal hands. (All 
carry revolver in belt liere, and many, a hunting 
knife.) The ladies whose apartments we had de- 
clined are fellow-travelers the rest of the trip, and 
sympathize in our loss, saying it was a castigo for 
being too modest, as, had we slept in their apart- 
ments, it would not have happened. Daring the 
rest of the trip our party, which has accumulated 
to ten or twelve ladies and gentlemen, encamp on 
cots when we can^ on the floor when we can not^ 
in the same apartment. We will dismiss the des- 
cription of this return trip to Honda after mention- 
ing one of the most striking peculiarities seen upon 
the road and which we failed to mention in the 
narrative of our trip upwards. 

We said that all merchandize from Honda to 
Bogota is transported on pack mules. This rule 
has its exception. It will be readily perceived 
that such bulky merchandize as pianos (especially 
square ones), etc., would be impossible of trans- 
portation upon mule back. These are carried up 
the mountains by men, and women too, who dedi- 
cate themselves to this hard service for seventy- 
live cents per day, finding their own subsistence. 
Eight of these under a square piano will often oc- 
cupy two weeks in the journey, each carrying in 
the hand a crotched stick, on which to rest the 
burthen after every short stretch of the journey is 
accomplished. Bulky merchandize within the 
strength of one to carry, man or woman, as there 
seems no noticeable difference of potency, is secur- 



76 

ed by a strong band over the forehead, and then 
bending forward so that the body represents about 
one-sixth of a circle, it is curious to watch these 
people as they slowly stagger up the mountain, 
every few minutes backing up against a rock or 
bank to lean their heavy burthens upon it. And 
let it not be supposed that it is only the lowest 
specimens of humanity that we here find dedicated 
to this toilsome life. Several we noticed among 
these female peons who, though hardy and strong, 
were by no means destitute of physical beauty, 
and were quite sensible of an}^ complimentary 
notice that was taken of them. 

The second day down necessitates a change of 
underwear from woolen to merino, and on the 
third, to linen. Arriving in Honda we are politely 
taken possession of by our countryman, Mr. Hal- 
lam, and notwithstanding our modest protestations 
of unwillingness to impose ourselves for a whole 
month upon him, having his house filled with a 
large family of his own, both he and Mrs. Hallam 
insist apon our acceptance of their hospitality. 
The extent of our good fortune in this arrangement 
cannot be properly estimated by those unacquaint- 
ed with the character of the Fondas in small towns 
of Spanish America ; but we, more experienced, 
held it and still hold it in the most grateful appre- 
ciation. Mr. Hallam, a prosperous merchant and 
banker, under 40 years of age, and of very cheer- 
ful disposition, resides in his own spacious and 
airy house, well adapted to this heated climate, is 



77 

well supplied with horses and mules, (horses trav- 
el best on the table-lands), is surrounded by a 
charming family, and to add to our happiness, the 
bronchical affection that so persecuted us in Bo- 
gota has disappeared with magical suddenness on 
our descent to these lower altitud es. Here, around 
Mr. Hallam, is also a small colony of Americans, 
consisting among others of Capt. Chapman, wife 
and three daughters, young ladies, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Whitney and children. But this is a digres- 
sion and we have promised to give some account 
of the geological character of the llanos and of the 
probable mode of formation of the curious castel- 
lated mountains. 

These llanos, varying in width from one to three 
miles, extend from Honda, at first in a S. S. W. 
direction, but in a general southern course very 
many leagues away. The Magdalena reaching 
Honda in a short stretch of N. N. W. course, here 
deflects suddenly to due N., and the Guali, run- 
ning N. N. E. along the foot of the mountains at 
the western edge of the llanos, falls into the Mag- 
dalena at this point, the two rivers forming the 
letter Y, both the llanos and the mountains be- 
tween the arms narrowing down till they terminate 
in the point. Honda is situated at the confluence of 
these two rivers, about two-thirds of the town be- 
ing in the crotch of the Y, the other third across 
the Guali, the two parts being connected by two 
bridges, one of wood, now in a dilapidated condi- 
tion, the other of iron, brought from England and 



78 

set up here upon the ruins of one of three arches 
of solid masonry, of old Spanish construction, 
shattered by an earthquake about fifty years ago 
and finally undermined and thrown down by the 
strong currents in times of raging floods. One of 
the butments of the present bridge is based upon 
the prostrate form of one of the central piers of 
the old bridge, which lies entire^ not a stone be- 
ing started from its place by the severe usage it has 
gone through, and we are told that an attempt was 
made to get stone for the modern butments out of 
these fallen piers but was abandoned, because the 
mortar or cement with which they have been con- 
structed, proved to be stronger than the stone 
itself. This iron bridge spans the Guali just 
above its confluence, at an altitude of about 
twenty feet above the present stage of the water 
and on a level with the pavement. The floods 
rise at some seasons from twelve to fifteen feet, but 
never sufiiciently to overflow the narrow streets of 
the town. Here are the ruins of two large convents, 
a remaining fragriient of one serving as a Hospital, 
and within the roofless and crumbling walls of the 
other is the Theatre of the town, where the audi- 
ence furnish their own seats, or stand during the 
occasional performance of some traveling players 
or amateur companies. There are also two church- 
es in good state of preservation and appear to be 
fully as well attended as in other Spanish coun- 
tries. The town is mostly composed of m ud houses 
with thatched roofs, though in the principal street 
the majority have tiled roofing. 



79 

The Magdalena, at Honda, has on both sides a 
narrow strip of plain, perhaps an eighth of a mile 
wide, which terminate on the eastern side at the 
l)end, and on the western at the Guali. From this 
plain and from the connecting llanos of the Guali, 
sandstone mountains rise precipitously from fifteen 
hundred to two thousand feet, those on the east- 
ern side terminating in peaks with higher ones 
beyond, the strata having a dip of about twen- 
ty degrees towards the east, and those on the 
western side terminating in a vast table land over- 
looking the llanos, and extending many leagues 
l^ack to the foothills of the western Cordilleras. 
On this table land we stand upon the same level 
or altitude as the tops of those curious, isolated, 
<;astellated mountains with their perfectly horizon- 
tal sandstone strata, many of which mountains are 
scattered in the llanos below, and the first sight of 
them from this position clearly suggests their mode 
of formation. These high plains, formed by the 
detritus washed down from the Cordilleras, have 
in some preadamic age extended across and filled 
the whole valley, and we are standing on the bed 
of the broad river that fiowed over and formed 
them. As the floods decreased, they were confin- 
ed to narrower limits, their currents corroding the 
plain away down to the level of the llanos below 
us, except at those points where, by greater struc- 
tural resistance, pieces of it have remained in the 
forms of these curious mountains. 

The soil on these upper plains is better than on 



80 



tlie lower ones, and much of tliem is unwooded^ 
and occupied for cattle raising. 

The soil on the lower plains is sandy, though in 
some parts fairly covered with vegetable mould,, 
and all, or nearly all, covered by wild grass, inter- 
spersed with occasional clumps of trees. 

In the Cordilleras, a few leagues to the south- 
west, is a famous mining district of the old 
Spaniards, where two hydraulic mines are ac- 
tually being worked by English companies, of 
which Mr. Hallam is the banker, and to which he- 
kindly invites us to make an excursion with him. 
After a few hours of hard riding up the llanos^ 
we plunge into the foothills across the Guali and 
begin climbing into higher altitudes. We soon 
iind that the geological formations are entirely 
different in character. Granite, greenstone and. 
slate are now the prevailing rocks, and the soil, 
of course, of corresponding properties. Here, all 
is well wooded, and enormous forest trees, straight 
as arrows, shoot upwards without a limb to great 
heights. They have grown so close together that 
the sunbeams have not been able to get at their 
trunks in order to draw out from them these 
lateral appendages, and so, these vivifying forces 
being received exclusively upon their tops, it has 
led all their developing energies upwards. 

Now and again one appears in our path quite 
dead ; its life crushed out of it in the embrace of 
those huge vegetable serpents that here abound 
and prey upon its fellow fauna ; but the vulgar 



81 

tangle that usually prevails in this humid and heat- 
ed climate seems here to be almost entirely smoth- 
ered out by the larger growth. 

Here it is not climbing by sharp zigzags up pre- 
cipitous ascents as on the trip to Bogota, but up 
gradual and winding paths under stately timber, 
with no rocky cliffs in sight. The rise is rapid 
however, and as we reach successive openings in 
the forests where some portion of the llanos below 
comes into view, the eye reaches far away across 
the valley to the mountain ranges of the other side, 
and now the higher table land and the castellated 
mountains both appear as slight elevations in its 
bottom, confirming the theory of their formation 
before put forward. 

Arrived at the mines, only two hours apart, we 
are hospitably received by the English employees, 
most of whom have been mining in California, and 
who have here introduced the California "Moni- 
tor," bringing the water therefor ^ve or six miles 
by canals. One of the mines, the "Malibar,"' 
works two of these monitors, but neither of these 
are paying dividends to their stockholders. They 
are clearing out the sluices and melting down the 
proceeds for the month, at the time of our visit ; 
but we also have the opportunity of witnessing 
the corroding effect of those powerful streams or 
jets of water directed against the high bank of 
gravel from a distance of two hundred feet. Be- 
tween the nozzle and the bank, the water describes 
an arc of one- eighth of a circle, and securing a 



82 

position opposite to its middle, we, while tlie 
stream continues, witness and enjoy a perpetual 
rainbow. 

The night before our visit to the "^Malpaso" 
mine, a tiger had destroyed a valuable hoise be- 
longing to one of the employees, and but a few 
steps from the house ; in fact, right among the 
scattered huts in which the peons live. So au- 
dacious a tiger deserves to be hunted down and 
chastized, but in these dense woods without skill- 
ful dogs it would be very much like hunting for 
a needle in a haystack. 

We spent eight days very agreeably in these 
forest mountains, where the thermometer stands 
ten to twelve degrees lower than in Honda, being 
the guest, during two days, of a Welsh gentleman, 
Mr. Cooke, and sister, he being in charge of the 
once famous "Bocaneme" mine, now held by 
an English Company, though not being worked. 

This whole district seems to have been upturned 
by the old Spanish gold seekers. These moun- 
tain paths often run through windings and turn- 
ings long distances upon sharp ridges not more 
than two yards wide, on both sides of which are 
almost perpendicular declivities into hollows from 
two to five hundred feet deep, their bottoms and 
sides densely occupied by tall forest trees, which 
suggest to the mind of the observer, that these 
paths have been here before the hollows, and that 
these last have been excavated by the gold seekers 
till they impinged upon the pathway, which 



83 

they have respected and left for the convenience 
■of travel and communication. 

We repeatedly suggest this theory of these cu- 
rious ridges to the natives and the miners, and 
though they all admit its plausibility, we are not 
:able to extract from them any opinion of their own 
by any ruse or direct means we are able to devise, 
they evidently regarding this subject as a matter 
of no interest. 'No level foot of land is to be seen 
in all this region ; but a rich soil covers every 
inch, and whenever we reach a point at which the 
eye can roam over a large space, it surveys an end- 
less sea of rich foliage of dark green, interspersed 
with bronze of varying shades of metallic lustre. 

From time to time large butterflies of the most 
gorgeous hues flit by us through the trees to re- 
mind us that the tropical sunlight has not con- 
fined its charming elaborations to the Flora alone. 
"Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.'.' 
Were it not so, this region would soon be filled 
with prosperous coffee plantations, to which it ap- 
pears to us admirably adapted. 

HOiq-DA TO THE COAST. 

On our return to Honda, we prepare for depart- 
ure down the river, having received letters from 
Ouba requiring our presence in Havana to assist 
in the liquidation of our interests in that capital. 
Just here, we find opposed to us one of the prin- 
cipal discouragements of enterprise, after the cli- 



84 

mate, wMch oppress this country, viz. : The diffi- 
culty of river navigation. The navigation of the 
Magdalena is practicable only about four months 
out ot the twelve, — the months of high water. 
No steamer has arrived at, or gone down from, 
Honda for nearly two months, and unless by acci- 
dental rise of the waters, there may not be a 
steamer down for two months more. During- 
these intervals in the steam navigation, a canoe 
or dugout, leaves for the coast every ten days, 
carrying the mail, but notwithstanding the as- 
sistance of the current, it is a trip of fifteen to 
eighteen days through that immense fever swamp, 
cramped into the narrow bottom of a dugout ca- 
noe, ready to upset on the slightest provocation, 
to say nothing of having the brains broiled out by 
the torrid sun, or to be eaten by tigers or alliga- 
tors if attempting to rest the tired body by spread- 
ing the blankets for a night upon the bank. 

While in this dilemma a small new steamer, 
drawing but two feet of water, arrived up the river 
to within two leagues of Honda, and dispatched 
its cargo on pack mules and received its return car- 
go by the same process. But the upper part of 
the river has many round stones scattered along 
its bottom, that have been brought down by the 
strong currents in the months of flood waters, and 
the little adventurer got several severe thumps up- 
on these stones in coming up. This is a London 
made boat of thin steel plates brought in sections 
and put together at Barranquilla, so it was not 



85 

wrecked by these thumps, though rivets have been 
started in one place, and the captain will not risk 
going down with the same depth of water, because 
if he gets one going dovin it will be more damaging 
owing to the swift current of this part of the river, 
as also it will be more difficult to back out of a 
tight place against the current. We are however 
near the Candelaria time, and all agree that there 
generally is, from some cause or other, a rise of 
two to six feet in the river at that time, and it is 
agreed that in case of a rise, which the captain 
deems sufficient, he is to give us six hours notice 
before sailing. 

There are some ten or twelve passengers in town 
awaiting such notice, and the river is being watch- 
ed anxiously from hour to hour, for signs of in- 
creasing waters. The Candelaria arrives and we 
are beginning to believe that all signs fail in a dry 
time when, lo ! there is a stir in town. 

Somebody has seen a floating stick come down 
the river. Everybody is inspecting the water to 
see if it looks turbid above the Guali, (as the wash 
from the mines always keeps the waters of the 
Guali turbid). Yes, at nightfall, the waters above 
the confluence of the Guali are beginning to be 
discolored, even more than ordinarily, with sedi- 
ment. This is a sure sign there have been rains 
above, and next morning, surely enough, the riv- 
er has risen one foot and is still rising. 

At twelve m., the rise has reached nearly two 
feet, and notice is received from the captain that 



86 

if the water continues to rise till four o' clock p. m. , 
lie will depart at that hour. 

Over so broken a path with equipage it is a two 
hours ride to reach the boat, so all is bustle among 
those who expect to be passengers, getting ready. 
The consignee has to send down two beeves for 
fresh meat on the trip down, and assures us pass- 
engers that if we arrive on board at five, it will be 
all right, as the boat will wait for us. 

The passengers get together in a cavalcade 
about three o' clock and start for the boat, our 
friend Mr. Hallam and the consignee of the boat 
accompanying us to see us oif. Urging our beasts, 
about half-past four we get sight of the boat under 
way steaming away from us. 

It being a matter of some importance to us that 
we should reach the coast in time to embark in the 
Prench mail steamer of the 22 ad of February, for 
Santiago de Cuba, we had been congratulating 
ourselves upon our good luck in this rise in the 
river, and now the reaction from buoyant expecta- 
tion to bitter disappointment is very trying to our 
temper, and we halt in silent reverie in our efibrts 
to choke down verbal expressions of our feeling. 
There are several persons approaching us from the 
direction of the steamer, which prove to be per- 
sons from the town who have sent cargo aboard, 
and bring to us a message from the captain that he 
will run four hours, down to Conejos, below which 
point is deeper water, and that he was obliged to 
leave us, because if he waited longer he would not 



87 

be able to reach that point before dark, and would 
thus have been compelled to remain over night 
here, perhaps to find in the morning that the rise 
had gone by, delaying his trip indefinitely. All 
v^ho wished, he said, could take canoes and reach 
him at Conejos before morning. 

Sadly we retrace our steps, but resolve to 
make the attempt to reach the steamer by canoe. 
At Carricoli, one league below Honda, we find a 
boatman, but seeing our necessity he will not go 
for less than eighteen dollars, it requiring three 
men and all of the next day to get back up stream. 

We take in one passenger beside ourselves, and 
just as we are taking leave of our friends an Ital- 
ian priest who has been to Bogota, as is ru- 
mored as a messenger from the Pope to the Bish- 
op, comes forward and begs we will also admit 
him into our canoe as he is ill and it is important 
he should reach the boat. 

A NIGHT ON THE MAGDALENA IN A DUGOUT. 

With three passengers in all and our equipage, 
our dug out is so filled that we are obliged to cramp 
our limbs under us in order to find room to sit in 
the bottom of the canoe, and the oarsmen will not 
consent to our sitting on our trunks from fear of 
our upsetting the craft. 

It is quite dark as in this uncomfortable position 
we push off from the bank into the current and 
paddle away down stream. Tliere is no moon and 



our friends upon the bank soon disappear from 
our sight in the dark folds of night. 

Their hearty good bye and warm parting grasp 
lingers in our mind and deepens the paiting gloom. 
Downward we speed with the current in moody 
silence, holding converse with our memories of 
the friends we have left behind. The stars twinkle 
in the firmament above us and meet our gaze in 
seeming sympathy, for they too are silent. 

The priest at last, as if the silence was getting 
painfuJ, makes an effort to draw us from our 
dreamy quietude into some conversation of a gen- 
eral character, about the novelty of our situation 
and our prospects of reaching the steamer before 
morning, both of us with some nervousness, lest if 
morning should overtake us before our arrival at 
Conejos, we might find her again departed, and 
we a long day's journey from our lodgings 
at Honda. The climate did not agree with him 
at Bogota and he has been sick with intermittent 
fever at Honda while waiting for a steamer. He 
related to us that the physician whom he had sum- 
moned to attend him, prescribed for him on his 
first visit, five drops of Holy Water with five drops 
of Sacramental Wine, and on remonstrating with 
him that he was sought for the aid of his medi- 
cal science and not for that of his spiritual faith, 
the doctor chided him for trying to usurp in 
the case an intelligence superior to his physi- 
cian's and took his leave. The priest not having so 
much faith in the virtues of Holy Water as the 



89 

medicine man, asked for his bill for this visit and 
was charged ten dollars therefor. The hours te- 
diously move by and it is impossible to remain 
in so cramped a position of body so many hours, 
so we occasionally stretch ourselves upon the top 
of our equipage, to the great consternation of the 
canotiers, who repeatedly remonstrate with us 
Now and again, the hooting of a startled owl or 
the roar of a wild beast rings out upon the still 
night air, or the splash of some enterprising fish, 
as it jumps in pursuit of its frightened prey breaks 
the monotony as we paddle on. 

Towards morning, as we swing round a bend 
of the river, two glaring lamplights announce 
to us that we are approaching the coveted steam- 
er, and we are soon taken on board. The captain 
is copious in his expressions of regret at having 
put us to so much trouble, and we are forced to 
admit that he was not without excuse. 

Our satisfaction with having our arrival at the 
coast in time for the French steamer as good as 
assured, makes us feel comfortable and well satis- 
lied with everybody. 

We get through the next day prosperously, 
though the constant changes in the channels of 
this river keep the pilot anxiously watching to see 
where are the most rapid currents in order to fol- 
low in them so as not to get upon the subaqueous 
sandbanks. The second day we are not so for- 
tunate. Eleven o'clock, a. m., finds us in con- 
sternation, stuck fast upon a bank less than two 



90 

feet under tlie surface and a rapid current busily 
pushing us farther into it. We now find we are 
loaded down to nearly three feet draught of water, 
and are more than a foot deep in the sand. Our 
stern wheel in vain is whirled around with the 
greatest force we can muster, in the attempts to 
back out of this difficulty, but we remain motion- 
less and the sand will accumulate around us in a 
few hours to an extent that will make it difficult 
to extricate ourselves, we are in a position where 
no breeze reaches us and old sol seems to pro- 
pose to himself to try to the utmost the powers of 
human endurance under his most ardent and con- 
suming heat. We launch our only dugout canoe 
and two strong men with poles to push it up against 
the current carry a hawser to several snags up 
stream, but one after another of them prove to be 
not sufficiently fast to the bottom to resist the force 
of our steam windlass in its efforts to draw us out 
of the sand. A huge prop is next projected from 
our forward deck over the side into the bottom, 
and our steam windlass brought to bear upon it to 
push our nose around. This succeeds to get our 
prow directed across the stream and our boat 
broadside on the sandbank. Our dugout is now 
sent upstream with the anchor, having a strong 
hawser attached, to plant it a good distance above. 
Three strong men with poles propel this nutshell 
as it topples along, threatening at every instant 
to get up a revolution of its own. 

Only long practice with such crafts enables 



91 

these men to get some distance up stieam before 
this threatening is put into practice, and then the 
wink of an eye is all the time required to complete 
this revolution, leaving the canoe right side up 
again, but nearly filled with water and the men 
and anchor are in the river. The water where they 
have fallen in is only four feet deep, but the}^ are 
violently agitated, throw themselves into the 
canoe which, half filled with water, sinks under 
their weight; when seizing it and their poles they 
commence a most demoralized retreat towards 
the steamer, dragging it after them. 

Tlieir consternation is not relieved until they are 
safely on board, when they explain that they saw 
a crocodile on the bank opposite to them, plunge 
into the water the moment the dugout upset, and 
as these are fast swimmers they feared to be over- 
taken before reaching the steamer. They have, 
however accomplished their mission though they 
have not carried the anchor as far as was intended, 
but it takes a strong hold in the bottom and we 
now begin to tug away at that hawser with our 
steam wrench or windlass at the same time push- 
ing against the bottom with our prop and pulley 
thus forcing our prow farther round with this push 
and pull. 

Patiently we toiled till as night approaches, we 
have our prow pointed upstream and held from 
settling down stream farther into the sand by a 
stout hawser secured to the anchor. We also put 
out our prop to assist holding us and lay quietly 



92 

througli the night waiting to try our luck at get- 
ting off in the morning. Tlie trial comes, putting 
on a full head of steam, at the same time tugging 
upon the hawser with the donkey engine we begin 
to perceive we are moving and are soon climb- 
ing towards our anchor at a fair rate of speed. 
Oar anchor reached, we lift it without stopping 
our impetus and continue up a short distance and 
tie to the river bank at a favorable place, while 
our pilot goes down in the canoe to sound for the 
deeper channel. This found, he returns to the 
steamer and at the same hour that we grounded 
on the day previous, we move forward down the 
river with grateful hearts, feeling we have escap- 
ed a terrible captivity upon the sands of this wil- 
derness of river and swamp. We had one steer 
on board which was slaughtered yesterday and 
its meat is cut up into thin strips and hung on 
poles about the deck to dry in the sun, as is the 
custom here, and from this drying process it is 
already, in the second day after killing, becoming 
so tough as to require considerable skill in cook- 
ing to give it the semblance and toothsome quali- 
ties of fresh meat. As we proceed downward, at 
many of the hamlets along the banks chickens are 
offered us at two and three reals apiece, and at 
these prices the captain is taking in abundance of 
them for our needs. On the whole we have a very 
comfortable journey to the coast, where we arrive 
in good time and embark on the French steamer 
Martinique, for Santiago de Cuba, on the 22nd of 
February, as we designed. 



93 

A hurried narrative of some of the incidents of 
our ramble in New Granada or U. S. of Colombia is 
now before our readers; but there may be those 
among them who expect us to say something more 
of these people, their moral and intellectual con- 
dition and prospects, touching upon the import 
of the change in their public opinion which has 
permitted the confiscation of church property, etc. 
Such confiscations do not in our estimation imply 
so much change in public sentiment as it at first 
thought seems. It rather implies that there are 
some phases of the dogmas and practices of the 
Latin Church which, unsustained by politico- 
military power, are unable to maintain themselves 
on their own merits, in public opinion. While 
this country was a province of Spain, these dog- 
mas and practices were employed, as in all her 
d-ominions, as political instruments in the govern- 
ment of the people; the controllers of the bayo- 
nets and those of the awful sanctions of the 
•church, sharing the honors and emoluments of 
their joint government. ''Faithful subjects, not 
intelligent citizens!" was their mutual motto. 
Bat when one of these confederates retired with 
the bayonets from the country, it was found that 
the one remaining had no terrors at its disposal, 
of sufficient influence to compel the acquiescence 
of the people in face of a strong undercurrent of 
common sense which was found to have survived, 
as inherent in nature, through all those long years 
•of this powerful and interested tutelage. Thus 



94 

public sentiment, able without danger to give ex- 
pression to its real convictions, soon began to as- 
sert itself, and these dogmas and practices fell into 
disrepute by sheer weight of their own in vero si- 
militude. They were essentially and designedly 
more political than religious; a part of a political 
system now fallen to decay. Without its neces- 
sary military confederate this regimen cannot sus- 
tain itself by the force of moral suasion alone. 

There is inherent in the human mind a natural 
desire to imbibe knowledge from those pure un- 
sophisticated fountains of God's truths, his own 
works, observed through the most careful and 
systematic methods which the accumulated ex- 
perience and intelligence of mankind has yet de- 
vised, and the incubus of coersive protection being 
thrown off, this inherent desire is sure to crop out. 
That still small voice, the reflection of a ray of di- 
vine intelligence, however small it may be, cannot 
be extinguished by either terrorism, cruelty or 
tutelage, however long continued. Cast down and 
defaced indeed it may be, but not obliterated^ it 
will reappear like the vernal revivals after a long 
winter of oppressing congelation. 

So it is beginning to show itself with this peo- 
ple and is taking shape in organizations for public 
instruction, an account of which we will let the 
Director of Public Instruction of the State of Cun- 
dinamarca, (the State in which the National Cap- 
ital is situated) describe in a few brief sentences, 
which we translate from his Fifth Annual Report 
to the State Legislature for 1875. 



95 

As preliminary information, we will say that on 
the 30th of May, 1868, the National Congress de- 
clared a national inherence in public instruction, 
in order to secure the following among other ob- 
jects, viz : 

1st. For the support of a National University, 
created by a law passed on the 22nd of Septem- 
ber, in the year 1867. 

2nd. For the support of two Normal Schools in 
each State Capital, for the formation of male and 
female teachers. 

3rd . For the establishment, in connection with 
each of these Normal Schools, of a Primary Pub- 
lic School to serve the States as models for the 
creation of the State Schools in order to secure 
uniform systems. 

4th. For the establishment of rural schools of 
agriculture and cattle raising. 

5th. For the formation, publication and diffu- 
sion of text books, etc. 

Public instruction was organized in the Capital 
State in 1870, and obligatory attendance of chil- 
dren between certain ages was made a fundamen- 
tal law of the State and as such incorporated in 
its constitution. 

We now give the promised extract, viz : 

'' Gentlemen Deputies to the Legislative Assem- 
bly of the Sovereign State of Candinamarca : 

^ ' In the present Annual Report, which is the 
Fifth that I have had the honor to submit to the 
Honorable Legislative Assembly, I shall limit my- 



96 

self to laying before you, with as much precision 
as I am able to do, the results obtained by Public 
Instruction, and without reference to what might be 
termed doctrinal points; nor shall I enter into other 
abstract considerations, since, by good fortune, in 
this country and in these times, it is already unne- 
€essary to make further efforts in order that the ad- 
vantages of popular primary education, the funda- 
mental basis of a republic, shall be duly appre- 
€iated. Nor is there necessity for demonstratiug 
that this is the true source from which flows all 
positive progress in the straight and sure road to 
social improvement. These are already dog- 
mas in all minds ; dogmas which not even the 
sectaries of ignorance who have so long sustained 
that anti- civilizing struggle that is to-day in com- 
plete discredit, will often contradict. When they 
do so, instead of gaining proselytes to their cause, 
they only widen the void between them and sen- 
sate public opinion. 

"Administrative branches that, like public in- 
struction, exact of its officers and of the citizens, 
the regular execution of determinate acts ordinari- 
ly gratuitous, are the most difficult to establish, be- 
cause their punctual fulfillment requires the for- 
mation of habits only to be acquired by the per- 
sistent action of the law through long periods of 
tim3. These habits, which long education has 
raised up in other nations, to a level from 
which we are very distant, have not yet been able 
to acclimate themselves among our people in 



97 

whom the colonial seed has become profoundly 
rooted. 

''But in view of results already obtained we 
ought not to despair of finally arriving at the de- 
sired progressive perfectionment, if we devote our 
energies to the work undertaken, with faWh^ ab- 
negation and constancy, ^^ 

REMAKKS. 

Such a lucid statement of the necessities and 
difficulties of public instruction could not be put 
into fewer words, and it shows the men now en- 
deavoring to direct the developement and desti- 
nies of this people to be fully imbued with the 
true catholic spirit of the age, and do therefore 
merit the best sympathies of all who take a proper 
interest in the universal movements of civilization 
and feel their share of moral responsibility there- 
for. 

In unfavorable contrast with these enlightened 
sentiments are the doctrines inculcated also by 
some of the reformed religious sects of our own 
and other countries. We were strongly reminded 
of this fact during attendance in Bogota on serv- 
ices in the Protestant Chapel, established by an 
American Board of Foreign Missions. About 
fifty persons were present, and the sermon, in 
somewhat broken, though quite intelligible Span- 
ish, was devoted to the sublime doctrine of Jesus 
as the great physician to the soul ; but inculcated 
the doctrine of a sudden change of heart and 



98 

without which, the utter inefficacj of secular edu- 
cation, for the development of morality and hap- 
piness. Without such change of heart secular 
public instruction, it argued, operates against 
morality, tending to produce smart rogues to prey 
upon society. 

Thus we have some of the reformed sects, 
teaching the doctrine that humanity' s only chance 
for happiness lies in that emotional religion, 
known to modern pathologists as a nervous dis- 
ease^ or at least as dependant upon nervous debili- 
ty, an atonic condition of the nervous system, viz. : 
Ecstacy^ and ignoring in toto the oft demonstrated 
fact that individual and social morality is de- 
pendent entirely upon the growth of enlightenment 
in individuals and in society, as to the mutual 
interdependance of their own interests and those 
of society. 

^o emotional ideas of morality, nor those held 
only as a matter of opinion, ever exercises any 
permanent shaping control over the actions of 
men or women. It is only when they have passed 
through the stage of intellectual inquiry and exam- 
ination into one of settled and abiding intellec- 
tual conviction, that they are efficacious and reli- 
able for moral control. 

The change of heart that promotes happiness in 
men and in society, is of slow growth, keeping 
pace with other developments; not the sudden 
emotional changes that the Wesleyans, among 
others, have proclaimed as the " good tidings of 
great joy." 



99 

This sudden emotional cliange of heart, spring- 
ing upon and subduing the deep rooted habits of 
a lifetime, is so contrary to the teachings of ex- 
perience that it strikes the logical mind as some- 
thing incredible, and when, moreover, we con- 
sider the very small proportion of such conver- 
sions that really influence the subsequent char- 
acter, does it not justify us in asking a dispas- 
sionate reconsideration of the whole subject by 
all truly religious minds. 

Feeling that we had a right to understand the 
position of the protestant mission, on the question 
of public instruction, we called upon the pastor, 
and during our interview submitted to him the 
following interogatories, viz. : 

Q. Does the protestant mission under your 
charge lend its active influence in support of 
Public Instruction as now organized here, and if 
not, why not ? 

A. Oh yes, it has my approval, and I am aid- 
ing it as far as I am able. 

Q. Bid we rightly understand you to inculcate 
in your sermon that secular general education is 
not favorable to the interests of society, its tend- 
encies being to create smart rogues to prey 
upon it ? 

A. In the absence of religious instruction ! 
My doctrine is that the two must be combined in 
order to be favorable to society. 

Q. Mr. Weaver ! We are informed that the line 
between the conservative and the progressive por- 



100 

tion of this population is sharply defined upon 
this question of public instruction, general and 
obligatory,, on which side of this line does the 
protestant mission take its stand ? 

A. On the progressive side ; but our posi- 
tion is somewhat peculiar here. We have to be 
prudent. 

We became satisfied that the general feeling of 
the missionary is upon the right side on this ques- 
tion of schools or no schools, but we have no 
doubt that the organization he represents would, 
if they had the power, force religious books inta 
the secular schools, and it was this spirit of his 
sect that was reflected in his reference to secular 
education. So the case really amounts to this, 
viz. : Though this protestant sect would be more 
liberal than the older church, in the amount of 
secular education, she is willing to allow, perhaps 
would consent to unlimited quantity, the state 
footing the bill therefore, she too would enforce 
religious teacliing into the state schools, if she 
had the means in her power for such coercion, 
notwithstanding the perfect liberty allowed by 
the state to religious schools. So much for the 
present attitude of parties : What about their 
actual state of civilization % To state this intellig- 
ibly, we must first adopt some standard by which 
to measure it. 

What, then, constitutes civilization % Of what es- 
sential, necessary and constant characteristic ele- 
ments does it consist % Is it man' s increasing power 



101 

over the forces of nature ? This is indefinite ! Is it 
tlie progressive refinements and cunning in tlio 
trades, the arts, or of the industries collectively '? 
These are all at a low standard here ! Is it con- 
stituted, as defined by Guizot, by the increasing 
production of the material elements of human 
welfare on the one hand, and a more equible dis- 
tribution of these elements in society on the other ? 
Such civilization is not here ! 

But civilization consists of all of these and 
more ! It is the progressive evolution and organi- 
zation of society in the direction that most secures 
and facilitates the highest development of all the 
faculties and capacities of the greatest number of 
its individual units, and unites them by the bond 
of gravitating sympathies towards that consolidat- 
ing ojienes^ of humanity, predicated by Him, 
who taught us to pray to Our Father who art in 
Heaven; the sublime doctrine of the inspired 
teacher ; the keynote and quintessence of His 
divine revelation to the race, which has been so 
frittered away and covered up by speculative 
theology with unworthy substitutes and irrelevant 
side issues. Nor is there any communistic ideas 
or insiduous attack upon the family relations, 
hidden in this claim for society. 

As individuals find higher enjoyments in group- 
ings into families, so families by the same neces- 
rsities of their sympathies find in society a wider 
^exercise of them, and in this, new contributions to 
their happiness. Are not these mutual sympa- 



103 

tliies the origin of our ideas of Equity, Justice,. 
Truthfulness and Honor ; to do unto others as we 
Avould be done by ; mutual confidence and de- 
pendence. 

Are not these the qualities we mean when we- 
speak of the christian virtues ? The trite maxim 
' ' Union is Strength ' ' is nowhere truer in its appli- 
cation then to humanity ; union of interests as- 
sures the union of sympathies and greatest power 
of civilization, as the individual drops of water 
combine to make up the powerful torrent. Just 
as the individual nerve cell in its multiple com- 
binations and differentiations of functions through 
regular gradations from its isolated existence in 
the lowest forms of animal life, up to its highest 
degree of combination and differentiation of func- 
tions in man multiplies its power in proportion to 
these progressive degrees of combination, so too 
the progressive social combinations of individual 
man increases his power in proportion as society 
approaches in organization, in blending of indi- 
viduals and differentiation of functions, the high 
type above indicated. 

For example : The individual in his primi- 
tive, isolated condition, is his own carpenter, 
shoemaker, mason, toolmaker, physician, etc. ; 
but as he aggregates into society with his fellows, 
each will limit himself to one of these functions, 
and, as he progresses in social combinations, these 
in turn are divided into specialties, each acquir- 
ing by these successive limitations and differentia- 



103 

tions of function progressive refinements of skill, 
together with cheapening of production, thus 
superior productions and cheapness becoming by 
habit, necessities to his wellbeing, and, while it is 
found that the power for quantity, quality, and 
cheapness is greatly increased by these social 
combinations, the individual is blended into soci- 
ety and becomes dependent upon it in exact ratio 
to its progressive evolution. That the natural 
development of society, impelled by the inherent 
necessities of mankind has brought us at last to 
the recognition of this verity, in spite of the ob- 
stacles that meddlesome absolutism has strewn in 
its path, proves to us how great was the genius, 
or, if you please, how real was the inspiration of 
Him, who proclaimed this truth nearly nineteen 
centuries ago. And in order to realize this more 
fully, we may consider that the whole traditions 
of His race were in the direction of the opposite 
doctrine. For centuries it had been taught that 
God had made a covenant with Moses, their great 
lawgiver, constituting it the only inheritor of His 
kingdom on earth. The belief that they were the 
chosen people of God was imbibed with their 
mother's milk, and thus sunk into their minds 
among their most fixed and enduring impressions. 
It had become a sacred prejudice of the blood. 

True, they had suffered some rude disenchant- 
ments. The waves of Assyrian and Egyptian 
armies had repeatedly sw^ept over the land of Juda 
and Benjamin, bearing away vast numbers of 



104 

them into the most humiliating bondage, also 
Nebuchadnezzar had twice destroyed their sacred 
city, the last time razing its walls and carrying 
its population captives to Babylon, where they 
were employed in abject slavery upon those gi- 
gantic public works which gained for that city the 
titles of "Glory of the Kingdoms," and "Won- 
der of the World," the vestiges of which have 
never yet ceased to command wonderment and 
admiration. The lamentations of their prophets 
show how rudely these events had tried their 
faith ; but the rebuilding of the Temple demon- 
strates that it still survived. Then came the Ro- 
man conquest, the arms of Titus again destroyed 
their sacred stronghold, reducing them all to Ro- 
man vassalage. 

The conquering power of Rome had made the 
tour of the Mediterranean, and it was ever its 
policy to raze and destroy the conquered cities, 
publicly insult their gods, and carry away and 
colonize the people as agricultural slaves in en- 
tirely new localities in different parts of the em- 
pire, in order to break down their spirit, and ex- 
tinguish all hopes of recovering their lost status 
and estates. Thus nearly all of the Roman pro- 
vinces were peopled by a conquered and vassal 
population, whose gods, which they had sup- 
posed capable of rending the heavens, and striking 
dead with a thunderbolt the intruder in their 
Sacred Temples, had been carried jeeringly to 
Rome, and twelve of them were afterwards set up 



105 

in the Rotunda, at the entrance of Agrippa's 
Baths. (This Rotunda is still in existence, known 
from that circumstance, as the Pantheon, and is 
the best preserved specimen of ancient Roman 
architecture, now in the Eternal City). 

Thus the world had suffered a fearful humilia- 
tion, and nearly all, except the Roman nobles, 
were partakers of the common lot. Fallen, many 
of them from a high estate to abject slavery, 
humanity had suffered a terrible leveling down- 
ward, and it felt itself indeed one in privation and 
suffering ; one in silent and almost hopeless 
yearnings for relief; and this state of circum- 
stances was sure to soon make it one in consoling 
•sympathy. Another circumstance, already referred 
to above, also contributed to make the similarity of 
•conditions still greater. Their faith in their pagan 
:gods had been utterly destroyed, and it is not in 
-the nature of hnmanity to be witnont an object of 
reverence and worship. These enslaved masses 
of humanity felt this oneness of condition, suffer- 
ings, yearings and sympathies ; but no one had as 
yet interpreted its pregnant meaning to mankind. 

The Galilean peasant, rising at once above all 
the traditions and prejudices of his race, touched 
the keynote of human nature, and it thrilled every 
human heart that heard it. A luminous ray had 
J&ashed in upon his mind like a gleam of sunshini^ 
from a brighter world, illuminating it wdth a sub- 
lime conception, which He proclaimed with en- 
thusiasm to those about Him. But the means of 



106 

diffusing this revelation were very imperfect. 
There were no electric telegraphs, no free printing 
presses in those days. He conld only go about 
in public places, verbally teaching His great 
dogma, and attracting disciples to His side. A 
doctrine at once so radically revolutionary against 
the established faith was sure to meet the prompt 
persecution of its doctors, and they desired to 
punish with death the heretic and traitor to the 
faith of his ancestors. He was duly denounced 
before the Sanhedrim, but Judea being a vassal 
province, the Sanhedrim could not impose and 
execute the death penalty, except after approval 
of the Roman governor, and they well knew, Pi- 
late would not voluntarily authorize execution for 
heresy to a faith he himself never shared. The 
subterfuge of the Jewish doctors, that of accusing 
Him of treason to the Roman State, and the 
story of Pilate's cowardice in delivering up for 
crucifixion one whom he knew to be innocent 
of the charge are familiar to all, and we need 
not here repeat them. We only mention the trial 
and execution, to show, how new and revolu- 
tionary was Christ's teaching, exciting the relent- 
less fanaticism and persecution of the blind reli- 
gious zealots ; and to point out that the same 
fanatical and treacherous spirit that murdered its 
founder in Judea, professed to adopt Christianity 
in Rome, when they found it spreading by the 
force of its inherent merits, and then, retaining 
only its name, treacherously dressed it in pagan 



107 

robes and mitres, put the pagan crozler and censor 
in its hands, put into its moutli dogmas it never 
taught, and entirely contrary to its spirit, has 
handed this spurious imitation, down to our 
time insolently proclaimiug it to be what it is noi^ 
thereby deceiving and misleading thousands upon 
thousands of honest, pure and religiously disposed 
minds. 

A wily politician, Constantine, conceived the 
idea of turning to his selfish ends, in his struggle 
for power, the christian party which was fast 
growing in influence, and to give plausibility^ to 
his pretended sudden conversion he proclaimed 
that a flaming cross had appeared to him in the 
sky bearing the words "In hoc signo vinces." 
This ruse succeeded, and when firmly seated in 
power, vast hords of the pagan population fol- 
lowed his hypocritical example from the same 
motives, the loaves and fishes, and then the same 
thing happened, as when England accepted a 
Scotch king, James I, she did not become Scotch, 
on the contrary, the greater population absorbed 
the lesser, and she remained characteristically 
England, the absorbed portion adopting her lan- 
guage and manners. 

So with Christianity. This fatal gift, an Em- 
peror, may in one sense be said to have produced 
its dissolution, and certainly the diversion of its 
name to cover the dumb shows, the robes and oth- 
er visible symbols of paganism. But its spirit 
has survived that treachery in its secure refuge 



108 

tlie innermost recesses of the human heart. The 
everliving, the undying, the deathless principle, 
" this will resist the empire of decay till time is 
o'er and worlds have passed awaj. Cold in the 
dust the perished form may lie, but that which 
warmed it once will never die." 

In its general and largest sense as applied to 
the race, intellectual growth and that of moral vir- 
tue are one and inseparable. 

By the phrase "intellectual growth" we de- 
signate growth in conscious knowledge of, and 
consequent harmony loith the natural relations 
and duties of mankind in the universe, of which 
it is a part. That such knowledge is cumulative, 
and that such sequence of ineludible perfection- 
ment, or proportionate increase in the aggregate 
amount of moral virtue in the practices of society 
are demonstrable facts, and that these spring 
from inherent qualities, and not from conven- 
tional proclamations of supernatural enlighten- 
ment, we are solemnly convinced by many years 
of earnest thought, careful observation and more 
or less diligent and critical examination of the 
historic record, with an honest desire to arrive at 
truthful facts, so far as our imperfect abilities 
have permitted to us. And here let us answer 
once for all that oft repeated question, ' ' What is 
truth % ' ' Truth is the providential purposes of the 
universe and the omniscient, omnipotent and in- 
eludable laws by which these are gradually ac- 
complished in spite of all shortsighted and med- 
dlesome opposition. 



109 

To facilitate a clear understanding of the posi- 
tion here taken, let us also define the sense in whicli 
we employ the phrase "moral virtue." We are 
quite aware of its etymological significance, mop, 
moris, moralis, denoting custom, or conventional 
usage; but we must bear in mind the fact that 
during the course of succeeding years and genera- 
tions the sense of many words change through 
imperceptible gradations of meaning, so that our 
lexicons only profess to give, not absolute defini- 
tions, but the usage of the best authorities of the 
period, in which they nre successively published. 
Keeping pace with growing intelligence, words, in 
the course of common usage, gradually develops 
and acquire in presence of the growing necessities 
of language a far deeper and truer meaning than 
is attached to them in their undeveloped infancy ; 
meanings, often difficult, clearly and fully to set 
forth in any scientific definition of them in the lexi- 
<jon, but which are nevertheless fully conceived 
and appreciated, when the words are pronounced. 
So the term morality has become to have a more 
pregnant meaning than that of conventional usage. 
A conception far more solemn and forceful upon 
the conscience is conveyed, when the word morality 
is pronounced. Its juonounciation awakens a con- 
ception of the law of right and wrong, no longer as 
according to what is for the nonce fashionable, but 
as according to the natural interrelations inherent in 
all being; unchangeable laws written by omnicience 
upon the tablets of eternity. It is our knowledge 



110 

of these laws wliich changes^ in accordance with 
our progressive enlightenment, as to our relations 
and duties in this universe, and also the cumula- 
tive perception, in the aggregate consciousness qf 
humanity, that conformity to these duties brings 
proportionate happiness. 

Notwithstanding what canting pesimists may 
aver to the contrary, we think it is fast becoming 
clear to all willing to accept truth for its sake 
alone, that there is in the public conscience and 
practices a growing conformity to the moral law, 
a constantly increasing average amount of moral- 
ity in society, keeping pace with increasing en- 
lightenment, and is dependent thereon. It is not 
asserted that modern society has yet reached a 
high degree of moral excellence. It is only claimed 
that in the aggregate they have reached a compara- 
tively higher degree than that of passed genera- 
tions, and that the persistent disparagements of it 
by the generation that has passed the meridian of 
its existence, does not prove that morality is in 
decadence but only that accumulated experiences 
has not borne out their youthful estimates of its 
prevailing amount and influence in society. Nor 
is it claimed that in any one division of society, 
be it political, social, religious or otherwise, this 
progress has been uninterrupted. 

Conceding the utmost good faith in the pursuit 
of truth to all those divisions, it is yet very 
evident that the sharpest and most cultivated 
human intellect is but partial and cannot grasp 



Ill 

the infinite truth. One of its most common errors 
is that of jumping to the conclusion that it has 
discovered the wliole trutli, embodying it into a 
formal creed and misleading the masses into a 
blind faith in that error, enthusing them fanati- 
cally in a positive, irreformable conviction that 
persistently excludes all farther illumination. 
There may indeed be positive truth in their creeds, 
but the error consists in believing it to embody 
the lohole or absolute truth, and that it cannot be 
contradicted by other truths fully as succeptible 
of demonstration. All partial truths may he dia- 
metrically contradicted hy facts equally true. 

Let us give an illustration : Take the course of 
the Mississippi river as the truth to be ascertain- 
ed, supposing it to be at a time, when it was still 
unknown. Employ for the purpose one hundred 
of your most cultivated civil engineers, if you 
please, and limit the observation of each to a 
seperate half-mile section of its tortuous career. 
No one will doubt the competency of such repre- 
sentative men to determine with positive truth the 
general course of the section subject to the observ- 
ation of each of them. But what a variety of con- 
tradictions and confusion results from the com- 
parison of these sections one with the other. 
The flow of some sections of the river would be 
given as south, some north, some east, some west, 
with variations towards every intermediate point 
of the compass, yet all be positively true within 
the limits of each one's section of observation. 



in 

Now let each of these engineers jump to the con- 
viction that, if his was true, it could not be con- 
tradicted by any other truth, and therefore 
might be taken as a sure indication of the whole, 
or absolute truth, and let him be firm and conscien- 
tious in his belief and dedicate his life to the prop- 
agation of his creed as the only true one, and con- 
sequently all others must be errors, thus erecting 
his into an irreformable faith, and we have a true 
picture of what is constantly taking place among 

us. 
Though under the influence of the most honest 

intentions, society divides into many sections, 

busily diseminating creeds more or less true, but 

also more or less vicious or immoral in proportion 

to the constructive errors, they convey ; and these 

are persisted in just in the proportion, as their 

devotees are profoundly sincere in their conviction 

of having arrived at absolute truth. 

It is the increasing or cumulative knowledge, 
disseminated through educational institutions, 
which is gradually melting away this hard crust 
of bigotry that has been stifling the natural growth 
of moral virtue since the race began, and has great- 
ly retarded its providential development. 

But let us speak of this bigotry with becoming hu- 
mility. It is a spirit of conservatism which seems 
to be inherent in the species, and this fact has 
been admitted by many as proof of its being a true 
inspiration from the Creator, therefore a revelation 
of truth for our guidance. If it is looked at more 



113 

critically we believe it will appear more as our 
balance wheel to regulate the steady, onward march 
of our development,-— an inertia, a weight which re- 
quires a strong pressure to move onward, and only 
after the accumulation of constant and prepondera- 
ting facts that force us forward in the direction of 
the greatest pressure, thus securing us against a 
fluctuating unsteadiness in rushing after inevitable 
tendencies before the aggregate mass of humanity 
is ripe to receive them. 

While these one-sided creeds satisfy the con- 
sciences of the masses, the experiences of the race, 
accumulated in this nniversal Kindergarten, have 
so improved our methods of observation, record, 
collation and generalization of facts that are uniform 
and constant in nature, that broader and truer con- 
ceptions are successfully opening to us and forc- 
ing themselves into recognition, and through the 
consequent growth of philosophical criticism, or 
intellectual power, it is discovered that all these 
partial truths are suplemental to each other, be- 
cause when collated in their due relations all these 
seeming contradictions are harmonized into a larg- 
er, more general and significant truth, just as the 
hundred half-mile sections of the Mississippi when 
collated in their due relations to each other, make 
together not only no contradiction but a sum and 
aggregate of truth of far greater significance than 
any one of its parts. 

In this view, the unity of man predicated by 
the inspired teacher seems to us to take on a high- 



114 

er, a far more inspiring significance and value 
than any invented by speculative theology. We 
offer this suggestion with all due meekness as a 
sincere expression of our humble intelligence, and 
in no sense as a slur upon any class of men. Tlie 
subject has too deep an interest to humanity to be 
profaned by unworthy passions. If we remember 
how largely the judgment of each individual is 
formed by his antecedent experiences according to 
the light these have given, then consider how very 
small a part this must be of the aggregate experi- 
ences of mankind, however cultivated the person; 
how small a part of the aggregate knowledge of 
the race can with our present appliances be brought 
within individual cognizance, and (if it could be so 
concentrated,) how small a part of infinite truth 
such a concentration at the present epoch would 
embrace, then the more we ponder these facts, 
the more our confidence is shaken, in any indi- 
vidual or society as being able to expound absolute 
truth, and the more are we disposed to keep our 
minds free from prejudice of dogmatic creeds, and 
open to the reception of growing enlightment con- 
stantly seeking admittance through the organs 
with which we are providentially endowed for the 
purposes of such development. 

Entering through these channels there is more 
or less of true illumination in every individual 
mind within the narrow limits of its experience, 
but this is economized into the general progress 
principally through, and in proportion as the pro- 



115 

gressive unification of the race develops improved 
methods of gathering np these scattered rush- 
lights, preserving and concentrating them into the 
cumulative blaze of civilization in which narrow 
creeds are destined to be swallowed up and digest- 
ed. Let us hope the time is not distant when the 
silly pretenders to the possession of absolute truth 
which they are providentially authorized to peddle 
out for filthy lucre and to force its acceptance by 
the arm of civil power, will become silent for 
shame and remorse for the sins unwittingly com- 
mitted. 

It is from human experience then, and successive- 
ly improved methods of propagating and diffusing 
a knowledge of them to increasing numbers of the 
race, that we may alone expect increase of chris- 
tian virtues in the practices of human society, and 
this in accelerating ratio according to the number 
and intelligence of observers. A thoughtful ex- 
amination of the past history of the race demon- 
strates how futile have been all hopes of attaining 
these by any other means, and it is a most cheer- 
ing thought to lovers of truth that so many influ- 
ential minds have now reached to a full realization 
of this fact. 

Successively improved sj^stems of gathering ag- 
gregates, and calculating averages, and the re- 
sults obtained by mathematical manipulation of 
these aggregates, are bringing larger and larger 
sums of intelligent observation within the reach 
of individual cognition, thus not only enlarging 



116 

individual powers of appreciation which are in 
some degree transmitted by heritage, thus tending, 
ceteris paribus^ to improve the natural capacities 
of the race ; but are also gradually enlarging the 
common fund of ascertained facts which point us 
with increasing significance to that irresistible uni- 
fication of human intelligence and interests and 
sympathies, that progressive drawing together of 
humanity towards that typical oneness predicated 
by the sublime teacher, a unity involved in the 
providential nature of our being and destined to 
be gradually evolved through coming time towards 
a grand and sublime realization. 

This is the new religion, or rather the purified 
religion which is destined to swallow up all others, 
and realize to fuller fructification all the truly 
christian virtues. We use the adverb to distinguish 
from dogmas which have been foisted upon the 
christian doctrine and are noxious thereto. So 
individuals and collectivities, social, political or 
religious, smaller or larger as they may be, are 
all devoting themselves in different ways to suple- 
mentary parts of one grand work, and their seem- 
ing discords are but harmony not understood, 
their partial evils, universal good. 

It would be an easy task to skim through the 
historical record with the reader and trace out 
abundant proofs of how even the most selfish or 
egotistical passions have ever operated towards 
this unification of mankind, material, intellectual, 
and spiritual, even the mythological satanic ma- 



117 

jesty with develisli intent, industriously though 
unwittingly engaged in the same benificent Avork. 
Indeed if we admit him to be a real existence he 
was undoubtedly created for that providential pur- 
pose. 

It would be easy to show how the conflict of 
human passions was one of the legitimate progen- 
itors of the golden age of Greek intellectual devel- 
opment, a vast acquisition to humanity ; how the 
selflsh ambitions of Alexander again opened a new 
world for human instruction, gave humanity that 
brilliant and copious fountain of intellectual wealth 
and culture at Alexandria ; excited its cupidity 
by new and till then unheard of commercial ele- 
ments which ever after have been among the 
most powerful incentives to the drawing of man- 
kind nearer together in a constantly increasing 
ratio. 

Passing through millions of similar examples 
we might cite one of the modern ones of pregnant 
significance, viz. : The ebb and flow of emigration 
and immigration. What else but selfish motives 
cause these movements^ And yet how fruitful to 
the unifying process. 

If there is any obstacle that more than another 
has thwarted this benificent unification, it has been 
inter-national and intersectarian prejudices. The 
enlightened policy of our own country has, to 
use a homely simile, converted it into a vast 
punch bowl into which it has invited all the in- 
dustrial elements of human society, of whatever 



118 

nationality, to How at will and lose itself and its 
prejudices in this general and inextricable mixture 
of interests and sympathies. The resultant socie- 
ty even in these first generations has acquired a 
fiavor far more healthful, generous and agreeable 
to its fundamental instincts than the narrow mind- 
ed bickerings of inter-national jealousies. Under 
these benign influences even the most ancient and 
indurated sticklers for race distinctions, the Jews., 
have melted in their first American generation in- 
to open organization upon the broad fundamental 
basis, ofiicially proclaimed by them, of the 
universal brotherhood of all races in a common 
humanity, carefully excluding from the laws and 
regulations of their new society all that could pos- 
sibly be objected to as dogmatic, or sectarian. 

Thus, while these commercial and social Mend- 
ings are gradually gaining cumulative strength 
and forcing inter-national relations more and 
more under the dominion of intelligible rules of 
universal equity, so under the same influences, 
the significance of inter-national or political 
lines is perceptibly fading out, many of the 
minor ones disappearing, as recently in Italy and 
Germany, the dominion of the civil law thereby 
extending its boundaries over territories where 
heretofore grim visaged war held frequent bloody 
carnivals of brute force. Ours is not the wild 
dream of Alexander, Csesar, Hildebrand, Innocent, 
and Napoleon, that of uniting humanity by the 
violent coercion of organized brute force under 



119 

the guidance of one human will. Such unity is 
in no sense desirable ; but unity under the guid- 
ance of the fundamental necessities of our nature, 
keeping step in its development with our capaci- 
ties, as both are being worked out practically un- 
der providential design, and bound fast in fate. 
This perfectionment then does not tend towards 
the political disintegrations which the democracy 
seem to be striving for, nor the absolutism of 
monarchical domination, but towards the wider 
and wider subjection of all to more and more in- 
telligent and adaptable civil laws, though these 
may be reached only through the discipJine of our 
virtues in the severe school of adversity. 

Thus it is seen that it is 'practice not preacMng 
which has given us these results, this practice is 
ever induced by selfish motives, and the perma- 
nence of these results is secured by the dawning 
discovery that the interests of individuals and of 
society are mutual and interchangeable. 

Example, not precept, has been the potent influ- 
ence in the christian dispensation of Unity, Fra- 
ternity under a common Fatherhood, Docility, 
Humanity, Loving Kindness, and Mutual Sympa- 
thy. There is no room in such a religion for 
the setting up of inter-national or inter-sectarian 
boundaries, distinctions, jealousies, enmities and 
antagonisms. He is blind who does not see that 
these are inconsistent with Christianity and have 
been the chief obstacles to its diffusion. We fear 
that its beautiful theories have been too often and 



120 

persistently used as a cloak or mask for uncliristian 
practices. 

It may be asserted that in such a mixture as ours, 
of nationalities into one political society, the vices 
as well as the virtues will be blended, and among 
them those which American society originally 
fled the old world to escape, Jesuitical influ- 
ences which in their origin, scope, tendencies 
and persistent intentions, are professedly and rad- 
ically antagonistic to all freedom of the political 
state to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of 
such natural blending anci evolution as above in- 
dicated. 

It is indeed true that the same uncompromising 
spirit of sectarianism which has ever preached 
the opposite doctrine of antagonism, the Church 
Militant, has also flowed into our society, and is 
busily sowing its seeds of discord by every means 
that the most wily, diligent, and intriguing of all 
human organizations can suggest ; but we feel sure 
that although these may indeed retard the general 
advance, the inherent qualities and necessities of 
humanity must inevitabl}^ overcome all obstacles, 
and the spirit of investigation and general culture 
is already far too strong to be dominated and 
controlled by the adverse spirit. The advantages 
of general education have become far too widely 
recognized by public opinion to permit of its ever 
again being smothered out of a community where 
a majority of the population dictate the policy of 
the State. 



1^1 

Oil the other hand tlie corporate community 
"vvhich guarantees equal protection to aZZ religions, 
€an neither adopt nor favor any one of them, or 
any of their doctrines, in its schools where at- 
tendance is compulsatory on the children of all 
denominations. 

Nor has the purely political state any right to 
give moneys to any denominational school, what- 
sover, because that vrould be favoring it, and in 
violation of the obviously just rule above laid 
down. The state which is the political represen- 
tative of the whole community, and organized to 
make and administer laws appropriate to sucli 
equal protection, is deeply interested in the diffu- 
sion of general intelligence in an economical 
among other points of view. Not only is the 
individual much less liable to become an elee- 
mosynary charge upon the state, but is also more 
capable of developing the elements of welfare in 
the community, and to secure these advantages to 
society, is a legitimate object of its political 
organization. 

For this object alone the state establishes its 
own schools, and attendance in them properly 
should be compulsatory and binding upon aU^ a rea- 
sonable portion of the time during suitable school 
age. It lays no claim to giving complete education. 
It teaches at its own expense what its interests re- 
quire, without interfering with the rights of others, 
leaving full liberty to parents and guardians, to 
supplement at their own expense its teaching with 



122 

any other, whether secular or reh'gious, which 
they in their unlimited discretion may deem ne- 
cessary and proper to complete it. 

The state raises its money by general taxation 
for the common purposes of the community, and 
it cannot give a dollar to any school not common 
to the whole community, without doing gross in- 
justice to its trust, any more than it can enforce 
in its school the teaching of a religion not com- 
mon to all, or the reading of a religious book, not 
a common textbook to all, or that might be ob- 
jected to on the ground of its being of an edition not 
recognized as a textbook by all denominations. 

While there exists in the community a class of 
persons who lay claim to being the heaven -ap- 
pointed possessors and representatives of absolute 
truth, it is not surprising they should clammer 
for the obligatory teaching of their dogmas in the 
public schools ; for that is a logical sequence from 
the illogical premiss that the finite mind has 
grasped the infinite truth. 

As we have in our community a variety of such 
claimants, all hoping for the propagation of their 
tenets by political intrigue and private finesse, 
some urging that under our political system the 
majority-rule may enforce any and every policy, 
we would most respectfully urge them to reflect 
that the only way to steer clear of political chaos, 
is to strictly adhere to the farseeing policy of the 
founders of our constitutional laws. 

These guarantee to all citizens some rights that 



123 

are inalienable ; that are inviolable by majority 
rale. Among these is the right to the full enjoy- 
ment of religious tenets, whatsoever these may be, 
and all who would interfere with this sacred right 
by the majority rule, are urging doctrines directly 
subversive of both the spirit and letter of our 
system, and dangerous to the general welfare of 
the community. These are errors of judgement 
from limited intellectual vision. Omnicient power 
has foreseen these weaknesses and perversities 
of imperfect humanity, and has bound its gra- 
dual perfectionment fast in fate, whatever may 
take place in our time and country, for, as we 
have seen, he has made these very perversions 
and imperfections, such as enmity and jealousy, 
incentives to unification, though clashing in sheer 
wilfullness of wickedness, and passion. But in 
this explosion of passion, the moral atmosphere is 
thereafter more healthful, as is the physical atmos- 
phere after two dense clouds charged, one with po- 
sitive, the other with negative electricity, explode 
in the terrific thunderstorm . The contact has dis- 
covered to each points of sympathy; each has some- 
thing to excite the others cupidity ; a desire for ex- 
change succeeds the enmity, and in this is the 
birth of commerce. Commerce necesitates roads, 
bridges, etc., to facilitate transportation and com- 
munication ; improved methods of locomotion 
follow ; the arts of production of the elements of 
trade are progressively developed ; the sciences 
germinate and lend their powerful stimulation and 



124 

assistance ; the evolution of social organisms goes- 
on, and thus every thing tends irresistibly to- 
bring mankind into more and more intimate rela- 
tions and exchanges. This constantly increasing 
intercourse is weaving the material interests of all 
more and more into an inextricable webb, and the 
threads of human sympathy are so utterly inse- 
parable from those of their material interests that 
their constantly increasing confluence is inemtahle. 

Thus the progressive prevalence of the senti- 
ments of humanity and the other christian virtues, 
characterizing modern civilization, spring spon- 
taneously from the conquests of advancing intelli- 
gence through its social combinations, and the 
selfish and material interests of the individual 
units of society are and always have been the 
chief excitants to these beneficent evolutions. 

Therefore morality has increased and is becom- 
ing habitual, because it is, in the growth of gen^ 
eral enlightenment, demonstrating itself to be in- 
separable from the prosperity of individual inter 
ests, thereby justifying Dr. Franklin's foresight, 
when he declared that, if rogues only knew the^ 
advantages to be derived from honesty, all the 
rogues would be honest with roguish intent. 

Thus we have the teaching of the accumulated 
experience of nearly two thousand years farther 
on in the progress of humanity, coming out at the- 
same point as the Galilean peasant, and proving^ 
the grand truth, which he proclaimed to be verily 
one of God's sublime truths. And farther, that 



125 

liumanity, in spite of its imperfections and per- 
versions, has inherent in its constitution the inevi- 
table necessity of working out by its intellectual 
growth the demonstration to itself of this truth. 
And this intellectual growth is the moving power 
of its civilization. 



CONCLUSIONS. 

With this conception of cimUzaUon, and we 
believe, our general definition of it will be gen- 
erally acceptable, we may apply this measure 
to any and all countries or sections of the 
world to see wherein they have developed toAvards 
this standard, and wherein they are still defi(;ient. 

Man in his primitive state is a hunter, seeking 
his livelihood by the chase. As his game becomes 
scarce, he betakes himself to the raising of food 
animals, gaining his subsistence by tending his 
flocks, which roam about in search of theirs. His 
life is nomadic. As population increases, the 
allotment to each of a given district is necessi- 
tated, and when these allotments are insufficient 
for the support of the increasing population, then 
agriculture is forced upon him to increase the 
amount of food for animals, and also, in the differ- 
enciation of crops, a larger proportion of vegetable 
food is added to his own diet. Whether he origi- 
nally has willed it or not, these growing neces- 
sities crowd him into more intimate society with 



126 

Ms fellows, and the evolution of social combina- 
tions goes forward towards the progressive blend- 
ing of humanity into one common body with 
identical interests. 

Whether these unifying tendencies will or will 
not be fully ultimated in the unforeseen future, 
no human authority can decide ; but what is al- 
ready accomplished, w^e are bound by every 
right and duty to recognize. " The past at least 
is secure." 

That the progressive unification of humanity,, 
commercially, morally, socially and politically is^ 
drawing it together in accelerating ratio, towards- 
that significant oneness, foreshadowed by the 
Avonderfully inspired prophet of Nazareth, is now 
become a living fact of such magnitude, as to be 
impossible of further hiding or denial to those 
who have any know^ledge of human antecedents. 

That many obstructions of this beneficent deve- 
lopment have been made with honest belief, that 
these were in the service of right and duty, we are 
quite willing to believe, and that by force of tradition 
and long habit of a positive irreformable faith, per- 
sistence in these errors may be consistent with up- 
right intentions, we can also believe, because 
minds are thus closed against accumulating light ; 
but the widespread disidence from them, cropping 
out everywhere, even in places where they had be- 
come most strongly rooted, show to modern 
minds how deeply and broadly the growing en- 
lightenment has penetrated the aglomerating mass. 



127 

Thus every sane mind to-day plainly sees, and 
many are bold enough to acknowledge openly, 
that there are general causes inherent in human- 
ity, acting upon its aggregated masses and its 
individual units, silently and irresistibly carrying 
it forward to changed conditions of amelioration 
in the direction we have above indicated. 

And when we consider the fact that human ex- 
perience is necessarily cumulative, and thus suc- 
cessive steps forward in refinements, and amelio- 
ration in the arts, trades, sciences, modes of com- 
munication, and in fact in all the collective ele- 
ments of civilization, and that these successive 
modifications grow up naturally in presence of 
the realized facts, and their relations to the neces- 
sities of the race, we may comprehend how ir- 
resistibly the sum of civilization increases to- 
wards the fulfillment of the moral law, made 
inherent in mankind by omnicient wisdom. 

Nor is it relevant in this view to discuss. 
methods of original creation ; whether in six days, 
by supernatural means, or by the persistent action 
of fixed laws through long ages of time, upon the 
mutual elements of all matter ; whether Genesis 
was completed according to the biblical record, or 
is still going forward. But whether the govern- 
ment of the world is by successive providential or 
supernatural interferences, or by fixed and in- 
cludible law, is a question already too well settled 
to require further discussion. Wunderglaube is 
to-day almost universally associated in sensate 



128 

public opinion with gross credulity and impos- 
ture. We may fairly suppose an autlior of 
the laws, natural and moral, which govern the 
universe, and speak of this Author as the Omni- 
cient Creator. At least this, in our present stage 
of development, will facilitate our cumulative in- 
tellectual progress till a more advanced stage is 
reached, and is therefore expedient. 

Now, at what stage of this progressive civiliza- 
tion is the country we have j ust visited ? 

Evidently the stage of cattle raising with divi- 
sion of lands, we find little beyond^ that stage, 
here. Agriculture, even in the rare places where 
it exists at all, is in its most primitive stages of 
rude development, unworthy the name of culture; 
the same may truly be said of the trades and arts. 

We saw no road worthy of the name, except 
that from Agualarga to Bogota, and one from Bo- 
gota to Quipaquira a few miles in extent, and no 
bridges except at Bogota and Honda. The schools 
have not yet had time for much beneficial effect, 
and the masses of the people are in squalid mis- 
ery and ignorance, notwithstanding the bounteous 
natural productions of mother earth. True, the 
few schools of the Capital have been doing a good 
work in raising up a small class, many of which 
have completed their education abroad, and these 
are the men who are striving to lead the nation 
forward. 

European and American commerce has its agents 
stationed at Barranquilla, Honda, Carthagena and 



129 

Panama to gather up natural productions, and 
have established lines of communications to its 
coasts and on the river to facilitate transportation; 
but commercial enterprise is mostly confined to 
strangers. Occasional evidences are met with, of 
the country's having enjoyed a greater degree of 
prosperity under the old Spanish domination ; 
but it is claimed to have been the product of forc- 
ed labor of the native Indian tribes which were 
then numerous and are well known to have been 
much more docile than the savage North Am- 
erican tribes. But their numbers have greatly 
dwindled under Spanish sophistication and mix- 
ture. 

It may be urged, as it is frequently urged by 
Spaniards themselves, that the peculiarities of 
their race are not favorable to the progress among 
them of the liberalizing and leveling arts of civiliza- 
tion ; in other words, that the tendencies of their 
race are to mount a proud aristocracy to dominate 
by brute force the lower classes which they pur- 
posely depress in order to live upon their produc- 
tions. The frequent complaint of the Spaniard is 
that the tendencies to education will eventually 
leave Society without servants. But those of our 
readers who are aware of just what race signifies 
in actual fact, will readily discover that though 
the influence of climate has had something to do 
with these aforesaid peculiarities, they are never- 
theless here, very largely the product of the ''co 
lonial seed ;" the results of long domination of 



130 

mistaken political and religious systems obstruct- 
ing and tampering with the natural course of hu- 
man development in their efforts to guide it ; or 
in other Avords, in their efforts to ' ' teach Eternal 
Wisdom how to rule." 

This is to be said in kindness rather than in re- 
proach, for these are the misfortunes rather than 
the faults of a people, and reproach is not calcula- 
ted to encourage them to overcome their aberra- 
tions from the true course. The present leaders 
of this people are fully committed to a course of 
reform in both of these particulars. Those from 
whose systems they have separated may point 
the finger of scorn at the sorry figure they cut in 
their new role, but this is egotism. 

For those who love and cultivate truth because 
of their confidence in the omniscience and un- 
swerving beneficence of its Great Author will re- 
joice that they are shaping themselves rightly for 
a new departure, and will wish them Godspeed ! 

Nor can it be expected of them in one nor per- 
haps in ten generations to reach the same level of 
development as that of the most advanced ranks 
of civilization, because the capacity for apprecia- 
tion of its varied lights and shades is of slow growth 
through innumerable, almost imperceptible grada- 
tions in a continuous course of evolution through 
many generations, in the same manner as the most 
cultived human eye has been evolved or developed 
up to its high powers of appreciation of delicate 
shades of color, form, symetry and expression. 



i:31 

That these improved capacities are, through the 
laws of heredity, transmitted in various degrees 
from sire to son, is proved by common experi- 
ence, and thus become characteristic of each race 
according to its antecedents. 

The strong conservative antecedents of the 
Spanish race have retarded or held back the na- 
tural evolution of civilization among them in every 
direction except that of outward forms of social 
intercourse in which they excell ; the spirit of 
their institutions compelling cultivation of the art 
to '* crook the pregnant hinges of the knee that 
thrift may follow fawning." 

He who seeks justice must know '' Tiow to ask 
for it," says one of their axioms, which means he 
must not demand it, for its rights are secondary 
to forms of authority. 

We have resided many years with this race in 
one of its chief cities and have to some extent to 
both this and the Anglo-Saxon race been in the 
position of teacher to pupil, and according to our 
experience the ready appreciation of principles 
and the practical tact of the Anglo-Saxon is sel- 
dom met with among the Spanish races. This 
shortcoming also in the productions of their arts 
and trades is strikingly apparent to the common 
perceptions, and it is the object of frequent remark 
among strangers, that this race with the exception 
of the Catalans, who as a class, are more develop- 
ed, seems as insensible to the nicer perceptions 
and refinements of the mechanic arts as the blind 



132 

fishes of the mammoth cave to light, and for the 
same reason, viz : Their capacities have not yet 
reached the stage of evolution required for these 
perceptions. 

" Den Geist bekummert um den Norden, 
Das Herz dem Sudan zugesehnt." 

With grateful acknowledgment of the many 
kind attentions bestowed upon us during oiir 
visit we now bring our trip to a close. If it has 
afforded any degree of entertainment or informa- 
tion to our readers, our object has been attained. 

















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